Amazon Alive

PART 2 Hidden Secrets

Length: 3 x 50 min

Format: HD

Year: 2010

Director / Producer:

Christian Baumeister

Camera:

Christian Baumeister, Luis de Maia, Rolando Menardi, Alexander Sommer, Yann Sochaczewski

Editors:

Stefan Canham, Stefan Reiss

Music: #

Oliver Heuss

Production:

LIGHT & SHADOW

Clients:

NDR Naturfilm, Arte, ORF, Parthenon Entertainment Ltd. / National Geographic Channel International, Animal Planet

SERIES DESCRIPTION

This three part series celebrates the extraordinary wildlife of Amazonia, reveals new thinking about how this vast forest took shape, and considers how its future might be secured. With awe-inspiring photography and animal behaviour never seen before, the films track our emotional response to the rainforest world over time: from fear to understanding – from understanding to respect – and from respect to hope. Above all, the series offers reasons why it isn’t too late to save the greatest rainforest on earth.

EPISODE 2: HIDDEN SECRETS

The Amazon has long been hailed as a biological treasure trove, but today we are finding out that this is only part of it's remarkable story. As we learn more about how the forest functions, we are gaining greater respect for it's intricate web of life and the people who live, dove-tailed, within it. This part of the series shows that the Amazon is more than biodiversity, it is a network of species, which are interweaved in remarkable ways.

A breath-taking flight over the Andes plunges down through the clouds to reveal the awesome spectacle of the Amazon rainforest. It is an ocean of green, criss-crossed by a glistening network of rivers. It looks uniform, but in fact one hectare of forest contains more tree species than in the whole of North America. But we are learning that the Amazon is so much more than a store-house of biodiversity.The Amazon turns the simple rules of biology upside down, and challenges our assumptions about life. We show startling animal behavior that reveals how the forest functions, and follow the lives of Kayapo Indians as they prepare for an important festival, to show that a world we assumed to be simple and primitive, is turning out to be much more complex and sophisticated than we had imagined.

Dynamic, flowing camera movements take us deeper and deeper into the tangled relationships of the rainforest. We expose a world of wonder, at different scales and within different layers of the rainforest canopy. There are alliances – and deceits – that involve a whole range of species living inter-dependently. A tighter web of life could not be imagined. Part two of AMAZON ALIVE interweaves the lives of the Kayapo with extraordinary and revelatory rainforest wildlife sequences to show how what once seemed straight-forward and primitive, is in fact complex and inter-dependent. A better understanding of this forest and the people who live within it, might provide the foundation of awe and respect.