Saturday, 17 October 2009

Heaven Earth (2008)

..."Heaven Earth - a film by Rudolph Amaral & Harald Scherz" portrays in epic sequences an exploration into the amazonian urban- and suburban field of "curanderismo"(practice of latinamerican folkhealing), in and around the city of Iquitos.

"Heaven Earth" is a nexus of links, a network of stories, symbols, lived-in-worlds and different drafts, which they represent in a heterogenous way - a hybrid arrangement of "surreal ethnography" - a patchwork of experimental art film, intermingled with indepth social survey and surrealist storytelling.

Personal approaches and backgrounds of persons, linked to the phenomenon of contemporary amazonian curanderismo are introduced...


...The protagonists reveal personal experiences, dreams, mental-imagery and annotate their understanding on the topic of "shamanism".

Amazonian "vegetalistas" (plant specialists) recount episodes of daily life and their career histories. Amazonian tourists and visionseekers report about interior spaces, motifs and passages of their journeys.

Representatives of the local tourism industry talk about guided tours, the psychoactive drink "ayahuasca", vanishing indigenous cultures and excursions into the surrounding rainforest of Iquitos, affected by the change of time.

Iquitos, fluctuating between 'tradition' and 'modernity' - a locus of cultural transition facing the impact of globalization and its sequences.

The film stretches a string between lived allday reality and the world of the "imaginary", both in continuous interexchange.
Collective and individual imagination blur and interweave to an synaesthetic collage...

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