A participatory ethnographic film that tells the story of the struggle of Q'eqchi and Mopan Maya healers in Belize to keep their medical tradition alive.
Social & External
The people behind it
Pedro Caal
Patient
Manuel Baki
Healer
Francisco Caal
Lorenzo Choc
Manuel Choc
Emilio Kal
Tomas Caal
Narrator, Patient
Albino Maquin
Augustino Sho
Dolores Pan
Filmed in the jungles of Peru, shaman Don Jose Campos introduces the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca, the psychoactive plant brew that has been used for healing and visionary journeys by Amazonian shamans for at least a thousand years.
Three people fly from Chile and Spain to Iquitos, Peru to experience the magic of the sacred plant ayahuasca.
MAXIMÓN - Devil or Saint is a documentary about the controversial Maya deity, also known as San Simon or the drinking and smoking saint of Guatemala. He is a mixture of ancient Maya beliefs and Christianity. The movie concentrates on the people who surround Maximón with their strong personalities, opinions and faith. The documentary gives us a rare view into the rituals and fiestas honoring Maximón. The cult of Maximón is flourishing because he performs miracles. He is also feared and despised because he is used to cast curses that can result in death. Ultimately, Maximón transcends the duality of good and evil, reflecting the Maya cosmovision in which everything in the universe co-exists.
This film explores the integration of religion and plant-based medicine in an Ewe vodu community in southern Togo. A village priest healer, local ethnobotanists, and a religious marketeer guide us through the medicinal and religious uses of many local plants and herbs. Here in West Africa, plant-based medicines permeate spirituality and illness, and help protect the social order of the community.
Chango, a spider monkey, has been cared for by the attendants of a Mayan temple. When the simian makes friends with a young tourist, the two embark on an adventure involving long hidden riches.
This documentary examines ayahuasca shamanism near Iquitos (a metropolis in the Peruvian Amazon), and the tourism it has attracted. The filmmakers talk with two ayahuasqueros, Percy Garcia and Ron Wheelock, as well as ayuahuasca tourists and local people connected with the ayahuasca industry.
This documentary introduces viewers to qigong, a 5,000-year-old method of cultivating and circulating the life energy called qi. It relates some of the history of qigong, as well as scientific evidence of efficacy. We also see qigong used in various contexts in modern China, and hear from Chinese doctors and qigong practitioners. The film was originally produced for the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
When her daughter is kidnapped in Belize and held hostage to be used for human organ trafficking, Kate Johnson goes on a crusade to infiltrate the cartel and rescue her.
Epic ground-breaking journey across India, China and Tibet to explore alternative medicine. With healthcare costs soaring in the west, looking east to alternative medicine is the answer. Now is the time to take the journey that will lead to better health – A Natural Way.
Yollotl connects the past and the present through a love story inspired by Mesoamerican mythology and testimonials from children who live in the Mayan rainforest. A story in Nahuatl and a ritual song accompanies the journey through the interior of ancient trees to the universe.
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.
A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.
Aya: Awakenings' is an experiential journey by journalist Rak Razam into the world and visions of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic plant medicine from the Amazon, capturing the experience and the western dynamic around it in unprecedented detail.
A documentary made by History Time on YouTube. Written, researched and produced by Pete Kelly.
Sachamama is a retreat lodge in Peruvian Amazonia. There, Francisco Montes leads ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists seeking insight and healing.
Shipibo healer Ricardo Amaringo describes how he prepares, teaches, and shares the plant medicine ayahuasca. Olivia and Julian Arévalo sing examples of icaros (healing songs) in the Shipibo language.
An American-born Belizian man travels to Belize to scatter the ashes of his deceased father with whom he had an estranged relationship. While in Belize he discovers things that force him to face his own conflicted feelings about fatherhood.
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
When relatively healthy patients begin having 'complications' during simple operations and ending up in comas, a concerned doctor defies her male superiors when she suspects a secret plot.
Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
Zee is a feared contract killer known as "the Queen of the Dead," but when she refuses to murder a young blind woman, she finds herself hunted both by criminal colleagues and a determined police detective.
A young half-Navajo convict dying of cancer forces a yuppie doctor to drive him to a magic healing lake.
A woman wakes up injured in a basement surrounded by corpses. To survive, she pretends to be dead while a grotesque ritual unfolds in the house above.
Ex-con Kris Chaney seizes the daughter of a Colombian gangster to fulfill a noble promise to the young girl's mother. When her father enlists both the criminal underworld and a psychotic killer to exact his revenge, Kris relies on everything he's ever learned to stay alive and keep his word.
In 1897, veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund is deep into Mexico where he encounters professional gambler and outlaw Joe Cribbens — a sworn enemy he sent to prison years before. Max is on a mission to find and return Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman, who as the story is told to Max, has been abducted by Buffalo Soldier Elijah Jones. Max is ultimately faced with a showdown to save honor.
A rogue soldier turned outlaw is thrust into a relentless fight with a corrupt sheriff, his obedient deputies, and a dangerous drug cartel in order to protect his sister and her young daughter.
An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable — and dangerous — weapon.
A young paramedic is paired with a seasoned partner on the night shift in New York revealing a city in crisis. Discovering the chaos firsthand, he is tested with the ethical ambiguity that can be the difference between life and death.
A documentary film that takes us on a scientific and spiritual journey where we discover that by changing one's perceptions, the human body can heal itself from any disease.
In a crime-plagued neighborhood near Miami, brutal, bare-knuckled backyard fights give young men a chance to earn money -- and self-respect.
In Los Angeles, an ex-con takes the underground fighting world by storm in his quest to fulfill a promise to a dead friend.
El Mariachi plunges headfirst into the dark border underworld when he follows a trail of blood to the last of the infamous Mexican drug lords, Bucho, for an action-packed, bullet-riddled showdown. With the help of his friend and a beautiful bookstore owner, El Mariachi tracks Bucho, takes on his army of desperados, and leaves his own trail of blood.
When a young mother's home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.
Follows a police officer who must retrieve an eyewitness and escort her after a cartel shooting leaves several DEA agents dead, but then he must decide who to trust when they discover that the attack was executed by American forces.
Agent Matt Graver teams up with operative Alejandro Gillick to prevent Mexican drug cartels from smuggling terrorists across the United States border.
When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
