The Forest Beyond

Though Senen Kaisi has lived her entire life in the Peruvian Amazon, she has never seen a virgin forest. As a young Shibibo woman living along the Ucayali River in the community of Santa Isabel de Bahuanisho, she grew up hearing about the massive bahuanisho trees for which her community was named. In recent years, illegal loggers, colonizing settlers, and palm plantations have increasingly devoured Shipibo’s ancestral forests, and now Senen Kaisi vows to discover the primary forests of her people’s lands. She sets off on a journey up the Ucayali River by boat, then travels by motor car deep into the jungle to a remote Shipibo community on Lake Imiria, where she meets Sanken Kena, an elderly woman who is one of the Shipibo’s forest guardians. Together the two women travel into the forest, where Senen Kaisi experiences an awakening, vowing to return to her village as a protector and restorer of her people’s forests.

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Documentary Shorts #2

From preserving Indigenous traditions and ancesoral lands to creating life-changing opportunities for inner city youth though hands-on music education, the characters in this collection of documentary short films fervently work to create a better tomorrow for all.