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The Amazon Alive Project, an initiative of German-Brazilian film company Light and Shadow and German Broadcaster NDR Naturfilm, aims to harness wonder, respect and hope, to protect the Amazonian rainforest.  All rainforests are special, but the Amazon contains an unrivalled level of bio-diversity; it’s quite simply the greatest, most iconic rainforest on earth. 

The core of the project is a three-part cutting-edge series for television, filmed by expert wildlife cinematographers, who have also obtained extraordinary access to remote Amazonian tribes.   Its launch, scheduled for the second half of 2010, will be accompanied by a major multi-media campaign to raise awareness and respect for this vast forest.  A planned cinema feature is a second, important strand to the project, which would combine state-of-the-art filming techniques with powerful story-telling.   Inspiring images will cross barriers of language, culture and class.  From a grass-roots level it will encourage people from all walks of life, and from all parts of the planet, to become involved.   

The mission of the project is clear: to persuade everyone, and especially decision-makers, to safeguard one of the world’s most extraordinary, and universally valuable, places.

The Amazon Alive Project will target a large global television audience, but  Light and Shadow is also keen to connect with other interested parties, engaged in complementary  campaigns, to extend the reach of this important  conservation message.  

Beautiful and dramatic images from Light and Shadow’s extensive rainforest archive would play a powerful role on other media platforms, to stir emotions and provoke our engagement with this most pressing of problems. 

Through the making of Amazon Alive, Light and Shadow creative director and CEO, Christian Baumeister, has witnessed the miraculous and diverse wildlife, landscapes and people of Amazonia.  He’s observed the threats to their existence, but also documented many of the creative solutions, which could help secure the forest’s future.  He feels a deep responsibility to move people in the way he has been moved, to spread understanding, and to remind us that the future of the Amazonian rainforest affects us all.  

The Amazon Alive Project uses stunning visual content to transport the audience deep into the beating heart of the rainforest; this is a remarkable journey into a world which seems so far away, but which influences every breath we take.   It will be impossible not to marvel at the spectacular and bizarre wildlife; to sense the richness and complexity of local cultures; and to appreciate how this magnificent forest plays such a central role in the planet’s cooling system.   Above all the project offers compelling reasons why it’s still not too late to act: 80% of the Amazon rainforest remains intact, compared with 40% of the forest in Borneo and just 4% in Madagascar.  But it remains clear we must act now.

Light and Shadow is a producer of award-winning films, which have been distributed around the globe through collaborations with broadcasters such as BBC, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, the German first channel, ARD, and ORF.   Collective audiences for previous, Light and Shadow productions have topped one hundred million.

The Amazon Alive Project is funded by NDR Naturfilm, ARD, arte, ORF and Parthenon Entertainment Ltd. / National Geographic Channel International. Amazon Alive is scheduled for the “Erlebnis Erde”, or "Living Earth", prime-time slot on Germany's ARD channel, and would expect to reach up to five million viewers alone.

Pictures often speak louder than words, and never before have we had to shout more forcefully, and with one voice. 

>> more about the AMAZON ALIVE series...