Documentary
It is thanks to this film that the Marquis gained notoriety with a wider audience. The film is the result of film footage shot between May 1926 and June 1930 in several South American countries. Departing from Guayaquil, he first went to the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific.…

Himself

Narrator

The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.
The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.

Yo hablo a Caracas (1978), the first documentary by Carlos Azpúrua, is marked by the luminous presence of the Yekuana shaman Barné Yavarí. This elder from the Amazonian forest articulates two powerful and prophetic warnings: first, a demand for respect toward the sovereignty of Indigenous beliefs and culture; second, a grave denunciation of the threat posed by “criollo” presence and its economically irrational logic to the natural balance of the Amazon. Through Yavarí’s voice, the film contrasts modern exploitation with a millennia-old Indigenous worldview grounded in harmony with nature, turning the documentary into an early and resonant plea for cultural dignity and ecological consciousness.