NOVEL

                                     


   An extraordinary expedition through the Peruvian forest where healers and medicine men know the secrets of their holy plants and use their fantastic healing powers.


   In this context, on the border of magic and ancient therapies, the main character invites us to join him in his astonishing adventure to solve the problems that surround him.


   His encounter with Sarita an irresistible character product of the bewitched reality of Latin America who takes us by the hand into a universe unknown to the European public, between the ancient vestiges of the Empire of Incas on the Altiplano of the Andes, the deserts and beaches of the Peruvian coast as well as into the Amazonian forests inhabited by strange magical beings where anything is possible. "Sarita" is a book which can be read as the reader chooses, but which in the end brings enriching new knowledge and perhaps as new way of looking at life.

Sarita, the way of the shamans

Is the art of healers effective or is it the art of charlatans?This debate which opposes "rational, scientific" scepticism and traditional therapies is at the heart of this documentary. How do healers use the visions produced by hallucinogenic plants to decode the disease? For the first time on screen a team of psychiatrists and anthropologists, with tangible evidence from ancient Peru and present day healing ceremonies, attempt to solve the mystery.           

Having been used for almost five thousand years by the people living in the Amazon forest, Ayahuasca is considered to be the sacred drink of the shamans.

By drinking it the subject discovers, through hallucinations, sides of reality, until then unsuspected and can question the plant as an oracle which can decode everything.

The film follows the practices of peruvian medicine men in Amazonia, with patients and healers, to finish in a medical center for drug users, which is administered by a french doctor who works for " Médecins Sans Frontières", who by using Ayahuasca has succeeded in releasing his patients from their drug addiction.

The documentary leads us along the path of this process, from the cutting and preparation of the creeping plant, to the healing ceremonies..

This sacred cactus was used during thousands of years by Peruvian cultures. The most obvious proof on usage in antique, is in the Shaman sanctuary of Chavín which develops in the middle of the white cordillera in more than 3500 m.

The shaman unites the role of healer and of priest, by acting as intermediary between the community and the spirit world for remedial aims. Science accomplished different studies on this sacred plant, and active found principle was the mescaline, as An another sacred plant of Mexico known as Peyotl. Shamanism always used states changed by conscience to achieve the world of the unconscious by means of visual and auditory hallucinations. The name of SAN PEDRO comes of colonial epoch because a relation was made with the holy Christian who has the keys of another world...

Healer Peru
Peu Sorcerer
San Pedro

Yvo Perez Barreto was born in Peru.

Author, director, lecturer, he has travelled all over the world with his camera to show the knowledge, born of ancient traditions can help to find solutions to the health problems encountered by our industrialised world.

HEALER PERU

Documentary - 26 min.

PERU SORCERER

Yvo Perez Barreto was born in Peru.

Author, director, lecturer, he has travelled all over the world with his camera to show the knowledge, born of ancient traditions can help to find solutions to the health problems encountered by our industrialised world.

Documentary - 26 min.

SAN PEDRO

Yvo Perez Barreto was born in Peru.

Author, director, lecturer, he has travelled all over the world with his camera to show the knowledge, born of ancient traditions can help to find solutions to the health problems encountered by our industrialised world.

Documentary - 26 min.

SARITA: THE WAY OF THE SHAMANS

© Magique Trotter - 2011