Directing
MOTHER SEA is the title of our documentary because life originates in the sea, and ours is the most fertile in the world. However, despite its richness and global importance, the Peruvian sea is threatened by various factors.
In the sacred valley of Túcume, where time seems to stand still, sounds awaken hidden memories. The echo of drums and the vibration of the air envelop us in a sonic ritual: a bridge between the visible and the invisible, between the ancestral and the eternal.
Salvador Velarde is like William Turner, a painter of light, and like Turner, he paints his being in the landscape. He speaks to us with winds, tides, greens, oranges, and blues. This is a portrait of the master.
Herlinda Augustin is a Shipibo healer who lives with her family in Peruvian Amazonia. Will she and other healers be able to maintain their ancient tradition despite Western encroachment?
Benito Arévalo is an onaya: a traditional healer in a Shipibo-Konibo community in Peruvian Amazonia. He explains something of the onaya tradition, and how he came to drink the plant medicine ayahuasca under his father's tutelage. Arévalo leads an ayahuasca ceremony for Westerners, and shares with us something of his understanding of the plants and the onaya tradition.
“Hatun Phaqcha, The Healing Land” highlights the nutritional potential of Peruvian native foods, the importance of its cultural heritage and the need to ensure its survival.
Documentary about Julio "Chocolate" Algendones Farfán, a prominent percussionist, composer, and performer of Afro-Peruvian music and jazz. He was considered the great master of the cajón and was internationally recognized.
The guarango tree—identified by its geoglyph in the Pampa—is an effective adversary of death because of the consistency and incorruptibility of its wood and because it survives where practically everything else perishes. – Pre-Hispanic Symbolism of the Landscape, Carlos Brignardello.
This was my first documentary, and it was the result of an Alto Misayoc initiation I shared with the great Fernando Fuenzalida and Victor Nuñez del Prado. It was on that magical night that I connected with the relationship between Pachacamac and the Lord of Miracles, or Christ of Pachacamilla. The short film, Lord of Pachacamac, seeks to exalt the religiosity of the Peruvian people and shows the links and archetypal gestures between these two deities. The film brings us closer to the laments of human hearts that each year focus their hopes on an image steeped in profound tradition. Different times, one God.
A visual poem from the perspective of birds showing how humanity's hand is accelerating the extinction rates of entire species; however, they behave as if we have forgotten that nature is the source and support of all life, including our own.
Returning to the Light is a documentary that tells the stories of some Jews who survived the Nazi Holocaust between 1939 and 1945 and found a new life in Peru. They came to the Americas to rebuild their lives, seeking more favorable circumstances, and found freedom in Peru: an open, multicultural society, a country of diverse backgrounds where everyone can be who they are and practice their religion without fear of persecution. A country where these wounded immigrants were able to make their home.
