Amazon With Bruce Parry

While this is clearly not a film, (the tv-sized-episodic nature being a bit of a give-away,) I still feel it's worth writing about, and indeed, viewing. This is not because of my usual - ooh-ah, the visuals are sooooo amazing. Visually it is not a work of art, although there are incredibly stunning images of the native Amazonians. It was filmed in a practicality-driven and energetic manner with the action of the moment dictating the shots. Some of it is frankly quite gross – I refer here to the extended vomiting sequence and some of the more revolting ways of acquiring and making use of alligator corpses. But it is a documentary of immense worth in terms of what it reveals about the realities of life in the Amazon basin. Starting at the very source of the river-giant, high up in the Peruvian Andes, Bruce Parry explores the lives of native people through the very intimate and charming means of living with them in their homes. He works hard, both physically and socially to earn his place amongst a disparate range of people. Rather than making a lot of intellectual statements about environmental and social problems, he lets the human realities emerge and speak for themselves. It is quite a privilege to be allowed so close to people who are still living in a primeval harmony with nature. They are extraordinarily generous and mostly very hospitable, it has to be said that a great deal depends on Bruce Parry's giftedness with people and his phenomenal eagerness to please. He spends time working in “the enemy camp” too, amongst loggers, cattle ranchers and illegal gold-miners. What emerges from this experience is that only a handful of very wealthy people and multi-nationals are benefiting from the exploitation of the resources of the Amazon. Those who are employed to do the actual damage are desperately trying to support themselves and their families. What is most touching of all is the eloquent plea made by the native Indian tribes for their lands and way of life to be preserved. The website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/amazon/ is well worth a visit and includes the blogs of Bruce Parry and the production crew written during the making of the documentary in 2008. It's a very heartwarming and instructive bit of viewing and something I would highly recommend to anyone who didn't get to see it when it was aired by the BBC.