Social & External
Commentary (voice)
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.
In March 2023, despite a flush of police raids and arrests in the struggle against Cop City in Atlanta, the Weelaunee Food Autonomy Festival gathered people for four days of learning and working in the forest. The observational film follows along as participants in the festival plant hundreds of fig, pawpaw, and persimmon saplings, give away fruit trees to neighbors of the forest, graft edible pears onto invasive trees, learn to mix herbal medicines, and restore an area of forest that had been recently disturbed by illegal demolition work.
Part 1 and 2 contain Matthew’s lecture on the first day. His broad topic is energetics. He explores the four elements and four qualities of the Greeks, the three Doshas of Ayurveda, the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine, the six tissue states of physiomedicalism and the four humours of medieval western Europe. Some of the herbs covered include sweet clover, elderberry, dandelion, rabbit tobacco, hyssop and black haw.
Matthew Wood discusses the Wisdom of Nature in presenting us with plant signatures that aid us in understanding the application of herbs as herbal medicines for your the health and well-being. Matthew takes you out into the fields to see the herbs in their natural habitat and explain the magic and the wisdom of nature from the roots to the flowers to the berries.
Herbalist Letha Hadady shares the secrets of her trade in this fascinating lesson in nontraditional medicine, revealing which Chinese herbs help mitigate conventional Western diseases such as high blood pressure, depression and diabetes. You'll also discover certain food products that contribute to overall health. Follow Letha to her kitchen, where she concocts her potent potions, and find out how you can replicate her approach in your home.
Parts 3, 4 and 5 cover a range of topics that came out of the discussion about energetics. Matthew talks about lymphatics, mucus types, the role of essential fatty acids, types of coughs, purgatives, Native American animal medicines and the signs of the Zodiac and the relation of each to an emotion and a part of the body system. It’s a wide-ranging discussion in Matt’s eclectic way. Herbs covered include red root, calendula, cleavers, madder, poke, scrophularia, yellow dock, red clover, mullein, wild cherry, crab apple and more.
Born in the early 20th century, herbalist Jan Mikolasek became rich and famous after curing countless diseases with unorthodox means. A true emblem of Czechoslovakia before World War II, the healer became even more appreciated during the Nazi occupation and the communist regime. Each regime appreciates his skill and protects him. But how much will it cost him to maintain his status in a new political change?
An elixir unleashes the undead in a village. A family at odds with one another must unite and fight to survive as their hometown collapses.
To preserve the reputation of their family's traditional fertility herbal shop from neighbors' ridicule, a married couple who have been childless for years pretend to be pregnant so they can claim a found baby as their own.
Lo Lieh stars as Sima Jun, a killer working for a corrupt lord whose orders are followed without question or hesitation. When the lord suffers from a life-threatening boil on his back, he is told by the Imperial doctor that an herb called "Longevity Rattan" offers the only cure and is grown in a remote village by an herbalist named Tan. Lo is sent on a mission to get the herb and bring it back before it's too late.
A Chinese herbal doctor trying to heal herself from sickness by making a soup of memory.
For half of a millennium, First Nations women have been at the forefront of aboriginal peoples' resistance to cultural assimilation. Today, Native women are still fighting for the survival of their cultures and their peoples--in the rain forest and the city, in the courts and the legislatures, in the Longhouse and the media. Keepers of the Fire profiles Canada's Native 'warrior women' who are protecting and defending their land, their culture and their people in the time-honoured tradition of their foremothers.
The documentary starts with a diva of a tragic family history related to a history of migration. The rare archival footage reanimates her history reverberating with the current world crisis. Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang is a testimonial – a witness to injustice and tragedy, but it is also a declaration of survival – a survival that is not static but transformative – not brittle but fluid. The trains that displace, the deserts that separate form one harsh horizon – a historical limit – but within that limit, against it and across it are people, are a culture, not escaping but flourishing unofficially, with the affective majesty of a melody, a rhythm, an Arirang
Behind the scenes of 'The Spy Who Loved Me', produced by The Open University.
Looney Tunes Friz Freleng appears in interview segments in this excellent documentary, which spends nearly an hour examining Freleng's history, career, talent, comic timing and classic shorts.
50 years ago this week, on 1 June, 1967, an album was released that changed music history - The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In this film, composer Howard Goodall explores just why this album is still seen as so innovative, so revolutionary and so influential. With the help of outtakes and studio conversations between the band, never heard before outside of Abbey Road, Howard gets under the bonnet of Sgt Pepper. He takes the music apart and reassembles it, to show us how it works - and makes surprising connections with the music of the last 1,000 years to do so.
Over a decade in the making, Swagger of Thieves follows rock band Head Like a Hole from the top of the charts to the bottom of a needle. Staring down their age, two pals and the main guts of HLAH, frontman Nigel Booga Beazley and 'co- conspirator' Nigel Regan strut the hard road out of hell, fighting to reconnect and return their band to past glory, amidst disgruntled band mates, a changed music industry, and disappointed wives. Struggling to place past addictions and sabotaged dreams behind them in their continuing quest for rock music relevance, the ever-collapsing binary stars of any Head Like a Hole lineup, are certain (not) to polish their legacy here. Swagger of Thieves captures what it means to be in a band with a reputation. Unrelentingly raw, wild and honest, to the point of being one of the most insightful music documentaries ever made. Essential viewing. New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF), Melbourne International Documentary Film Festival (MIDFF)
In Hugh Macdonald’s fascinating and inspiring doco, his cousin, writer and illustrator Sheila Natusch retraces a long life dedicated to sharing her understanding and love of New Zealand’s nature and history.
