Shamans of the Amazon - A documentary about Shamanism and the use of Ayahuasca/DMT

Featuring: Terence Mc Kenna, Rick Strassman, Yatra De Silvera Babosa, Enrique and Raphael, Shamans from Ecuador and Pablo Amaringo from Peru. SYNOPSIS SHAMANS OF THE AMAZON, is a personal account of filmmaker, Dean Jefferys, returning to the Amazon with his partner and one year old daughter. They journey deep into the heart of the Ecuadorian rainforest to meet two Amazon shamans to learn about and experience the ancient hallucinogenic ayahuasca ritual. The film brings to the viewer an intimate and fascinating look at the shamans of the Amazon, their culture and their rituals that are fast disappearing. The ayahuasca ritual is thousands of years old. It is said ayahuasca allows the shaman to enter other dimensions where complicated healings, shamanic battles, clairvoyance, initiations, ancestral knowledge exchange and communications with the plant, animal and spirit world is possible. The ayahuasca ritual involves the drinking of a combination of two hallucinogenic plants in the presence of a trained shaman. Using the first person narrative the video follows Dean and his family's journey, to meet with these Amazon shamans and explore this mysterious psychedelic world. The journey takes Dean around the globe to meet with people from several western countries who have developed their own unique style of the ayahuasca rituals. SHAMANS OF THE AMAZON examines the effects the outside world is having on the Amazonian shamans and explores how they and the ayahuasca rituals are adapting to these changes. The program examines how and why this ancient ritual is now spreading around the world, focusing on several western individuals and religious members who use ayahuasca. The video examines the legalities of using ayahuasca for the Amazon shaman, the curious westerner and people who want to get the use of ayahuasca legalised for their spiritual pursuits. In Amsterdam Dean meets Yatra Silvera de Barbosa, a Brazilian woman in her forties who has been running rituals and importing ayahuasca legally into the Netherlands since 1994. Yatra has been developing a program incorporating ayahuasca use to help heroin addicts quit their addiction. Yatra describes the police raid of the Santo Daime church in Amsterdam where the spiritual leaders of a ritual are now facing between 7 and 15 years in jail for drinking and serving ayahuasca. The video describes DMT's traditional use amongst some Amazonian tribes. A key subject in the film is world renowned psychedelic explorer, lecturer and author, Terence McKenna, who had been researching and experimenting with hallucinogens including DMT since the sixties. Four months before Terence died of cancer Dean interviewed him at his home in Hawaii.