Meet the team
Cast
Rak Razam
“I came to the potent cultural melting pot of Peru on an assignment to look at what the almost mythical archetype of the shaman was really like in the 21st century. And under the trappings, the shacapa fans and the rattles, I found a business of shamanism selling a psychedelic experience: a central mystery that is at turns beautiful, terrifying, mindblowing and ultimately, cathartic.”Alongside photographer Vance Gellert and Audio Engineer John Bowman, I interviewed and drank ayahuasca with over twenty curanderos, and met some of the ayahuasqueros whose business is enlightenment, as well as the seekers that drink this potent vegetal medicine.“And what I ultimately realized is this: it’s not just the ayahuasca or other entheogenic plants that Westerners are returning to, it’s a larger sense of their own spirituality and a deep-seated need to re-connect to something meaningful and larger than themselves. All over the planet the Global Shamanic Resurgence is simply about people finding themselves, healing, and being aware of the energy around them in each moment. That’s the shamanic perspective that is awakening in us all.”
Norma Panduro Navarro
Norma Panduro Navarro, who appears briefly in this film but sings numerous icaros which capture the spirit of ayahuasca, was born in the floating city of Belen, in Iquitos in 1944. She fell sick in her early teens and was introduced to ayahuasca,which, combined with a rigorous diet, saved her life. She then devoted herself to the science of curanderismo and healing the sick with the use of Amazonian plants, becoming one of the most high-profile women curanderas in Peru.
In recent years she founded the Estrella Ayahuasca Center to share the medicine of ayahuasca with Western seekers, and was joined by co-partner Paula Harbrink Numan (“Tarzana”) to promote it. Sadly, Senora Norma Panduro Navarro, passed away on September 29th, 2007 in Iquitos, Peru, and is sorely missed.
Percy Garcia Lozano
Percy Garcia Lozano comes from a tradition of curanderos and was initiated into the science of ayahuasca at age ten. By his early 30s he was one of the new breed of indigenous shamans straddling two worlds – his indigenous heritage and the globalized 21st century. He lives in Iquitos and balances his work between treating locals and the growing rise of Western ayahuasca seekers.
Ron Wheelock
Ron Wheelock is an Iquitos-based shaman from the midwest of the United States who trained for many years with indigenous curanderos.
Ron was called by the spirit of ayahuasca to do his healing work and in many ways he epitomizes the new breed of Western shamans following indigenous wisdom and working with ayahausca and DMT. His son Quetzalcoatl is with him at all times, watching, playing, absorbing everything he’s doing with the science of curanderismo.
Terence Mckenna
Entheogenic spokesperson to a generation, Terence co-wrote the book “The Invisible Landscape” along with his brother Dennis, which revealed their psychedelically influenced insights into the nature of reality and spacetime they received during “The experiment at La Chorrera” in South America in 1971 (later recounted in Terence’s book “True Hallucinations”). He popularized the indigenous use of ayahuasca and DMT in the West in his many taped talks, the body of which survive on the internet after his passing in 2000.
Kevin Furnas
Kevin Furnas was a Western shaman from San Francisco who trained with ayahuasca and other plant medicines for over a decade. He dieted extensively with plants at the Sachamama Ethnobotanical Gardens retreat for nearly two years, receiving knowledge and wisdom from the plant doctors directly. He was an ayahuasquero and vegetalista in the Amazonian tradition, performing healing with ayahuasca and other healing plants.
Kevin Furnas died in Cuzco, Peru, in April, 2007. His ashes were distributed among the sequoias and redwoods of Big Sur, California.
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Production
Rak Razam
Rak Razam is the author of two books: AYA, A Shamanic Odyssey, a travel-memoir of his time with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and a companion volume of interviews: The Ayahuasca Sessions, published by North Atlantic Books. He is also the editor of The Journeybook, a collected anthology of psychedelic writing from Undergrowth publishing. His popular global podcast, In a Perfect World, charts the meetings, musings and collective dreamings of the Ultraculture of the 21st century.
In 2006 he visited Peru on a feature magazine assignment to see what the almost mythical archetype of the shaman was really like in the 21st century. Excerpts from AYA, A Shamanic Odyssey have been published in Australian Penthouse (Sept 2006); High Times (Aug 2007); and Filmmaker magazine online (Oct 2007). He was also interviewed and appears in the CBC’s 2007 audio documentary In Search of the Divine Vegetal talking about his ayahuaca experiences, which has been broadcast twice due to special demand to millions of people throughout North America. A founding editor of Undergrowth, Australia’s leading counterculture arts and literature magazine, Razam is an “experiential journalist” that participates in the experiences he writes about, giving his global audience an intimate familiarity with his subjects. This has made for some rollicking adventures on the fringes of the counterculture, which have been published globally and recounted in his writings. The author is available for interviews about the book and to talk about the resurgence of ayahuasca use and global shamanism.
For more information visit www.rakrazam.com
Timothy Parish
Timothy Parish a cross media artist, working in video art, painting, illustration, writing, and graphic design. He is the Producer and Director at Verb Studios, a video production company based in Melbourne and Darwin, Australia specialising in documentary, music video and video art. His VJ sets of experimental organic shamanspaces have been shown across festivals in Australia and the USA, including VJing at Burning Man, Earth Frequency, Wide Open Spaces, and Solar Eclipse 2012. Timothy is the Artistic Director of Undergrowth, which he founded with Rak Razam in 2004. He regularly exhibits his paintings and prints his writing through the Undergrowth books and magazines. He is also currently the National Director of the Transitions Film Festival – a visionary documentary festival dedicated to showcasing groundbreaking documentaries focussing on solutions to global environmental issues. For more information check out: Verb Studios
Lulu Madill
Lulu Madill – aka SYREN – is a producer of soulful trip step music directed to creating an aural journey through culture, psyche and consciousness back to our inner nature. Her debut EP “A Feather To The Sea”, released in 2012, is an enchanting concoction of angelic vocals, crunchy beats, undulating bass lines and conscious lyrics to harmonise our frequencies to the spirit of the land. Produced in collaboration with Benjamin Last (Reel Spirit Studios) the five track EP evokes a sensorial journey of the natural world through live electronic instrumentation and field recordings. Behind the SYREN sound is Lulu Madill, vocalist, sound artist and audio engineer. Through her independent audio production company Buttons Touching she has produced and engineered numerous albums in Melbourne and Darwin, working across the Top End running workshops, where has produced award winning soundtracks for short films, theatre and dance performances. Madill is also lead singer and co-producer of Darwin based experimental live electronic band “The 10,000 Things”. You can hear Lulu’s music at www.syrensong.net
Mitch Schultz
Writer/ director of the breakthrough countercultural documentary, The Spirit Molecule (2010), Mitch Schultz began his life journey in Memphis, Tennessee and has since called Texas home. Guided by his lifelong love of storytelling, Mitch has cultivated a multi-disciplinary expertise in motion pictures, interactive media, and culture hacking. He segued from the commercial realm into developing Spectral Alchemy, a creative entity generating bona fide mythology through the exploration, formulation, and revelation of revolutionary edicts via an esoteric modus operandi. As a hybrid entity Spectral Alchemy creates operates as a think tank, transmedia production and culture architecture, exploring the inherent connections between consciousness, nature, language, technology, and the evolving human mythology. Mitch is also the Executive Producer and Creative Director for the DMTremix Project. He continues developing novel concepts by writing, directing, producing, and examining experiential design. For more info see: www.thespiritmolecule.comArtists
PABLO AMARINGO
Visionary Art
The late Pablo Amaringo was an acclaimed Peruvian artist, renowned for his intricate, colourful depictions […] Read more.
ANDY DEBERNARDI
Visionary Art
Andy was one of founding students of the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting which was established […] Read more.
SCOTT DRAVES
Electric Sheep Animations
First created in 1999 by Scott Draves, the Electric Sheep is a form of artificial life, which is to say it is […] Read more.
BRUMMBAER
Fractal 3-D Videos
Brummbaer is a German digital artist who has done work as an art director, designer, graphic artist […] Read more.
BEAU DEELEY
Fractal 3-D Videos
Australian psychedelic animator Beau Deeley comes from a family of artists and learnt from a young age […] Read more.
PETE WALKER/ IMAGINEER
Visionary Art
Pete Walker from Imagineer.net.au is an all-round graphics and multimedia creator from Darwin […] Read more.
Musicians
SHPONGLE
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Shpongle is an English psychedelic music project formed in 1996. The group includes Simon Posford (aka Hallucinogen) […] Read more.
TIPPER
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Tipper makes music for sound systems, with a diversity that ranges from bass fuelled electro-breaks, to hip-hop […] Read more.
LULACRUZA
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Lulacruza is made up of Alejandra Ortiz (Colombia) and Luis Maurette (Argentina). Alejandra is an extraordinary […] Read more.
MANEESH DE MOOR
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Born in the Netherlands, currently traveling, Maneesh mastered the art of sound synthesis and sound sculpturing […] Read more.
DARPAN
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Darpan travels extensively around the world delivering concerts, sound healing seminars and shamanic retreats […] Read more.
Pablo Amaringo
The late Pablo Amaringo was an acclaimed Peruvian artist, renowned for his intricate, colourful depictions of his visions from drinking the entheogenic plant brew ayahuasca. He was first brought to the West’s attention by Dennis McKenna and Luis Eduardo Luna, who met Pablo in Pucallpa while traveling during work on an ethnobotanical project. Pablo worked as a vegetalista, a shaman in the mestizo tradition of healing, for many years; up to his death, he painted, helped run the Usko-Ayar school of painting, and supervised ayahuasca retreats.
http://www.ayahuascavisions.com/pablo-amaringo-paintings-1.html
Andy Debernardi
Andy was one of founding students of the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting which was established in 1988 in the city of Pucallpa by Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna. He held key roles in the project as the financial administrator as well as one of the main teachers. He also produced illustrations for publishing house, Inner Traditions which were used for the covers of; ‘Inner Paths to Outer Space’ written by: Rick Strassman MD, Slawek Wojtowicz MD, Luis Eduardo Luna and Ede Frecska, and the book ‘Psychotropic Mind’ written by Jeremy Narby, Jan Kounen and Vincent Ravalee. He is currently living with his family in Lima.
Scott Draves
First created in 1999 by Scott Draves, the Electric Sheep is a form of artificial life, which is to say it is software that recreates the biological phenomena of evolution and reproduction though mathematics. The system is made up of man and machine, a cyborg mind with 450,000 participant computers and people all over the Internet. This is a distributed system, with all participating computers working together to form a supercomputer that renders animations, called “sheep”, that everyone sees. The human participants guide the survival of the fittest by voting for their favorite animations in the flock. You can join this project by downloading the Electric Sheep Screensaver.
Brummbaer
Brummbaer is a German digital artist who has done work as an art director, designer, graphic artist, and 3D modeler. As an actor he has appeared in various German TV movies, and also produced and directed. In the latter part of his career he became focused on computer graphics, and has since created several short computer-generated animations and has done visual effects for movies. He was one of the primary computer animators responsible for the special effects in the Tristar motion picture Johnny Mnemonic. He also created an innovative opener for SIGGRAPH’s 1995 “Electronic Theater,” and has long been a pioneer in the world of digital animation, where he has been noted for his signature hallucinogenic style.
Deau Deeley
Australian psychedelic animator Beau Deeley comes from a family of artists and learnt from a young age how to capture reality and imagery from the imagination in a variety of art forms. Computer based art was at first simply another artistic avenue to explore, but he was drawn to the precision allowed by computers and also the compelling fractal imagery that emerged in the early 1990′s. A large proportion of his earlier work was unconscious exploration of the medium and the techniques used to create various styles of digital art. He began to seriously pursue digital art as an artistic medium when he developed his own style by replicating images from my imagination on the computer screen. He draws inspiration from nature, science, art, music, technology, geometry, patterns architecture and philosophy. Primitive and world art, renaissance art, early Australian art, surrealism and op-art are some of his primary ‘artistic’ influences.
Pete Walker / Imagineer
Pete Walker from Imagineer.net.au is an all-round graphics and multimedia creator from Darwin. As VJ Asterix he is an Australian based VJ and part of the visual militia collective. With skills in audio visual programming, content creation, real-time mixing and infrastructure production; vjing has become more than a passion over the last ten years of experience. Pete made the ‘shipibo’ style video circuits that grace the film.
Shpongle
Shpongle is an English psychedelic music project formed in 1996. The group includes Simon Posford (aka Hallucinogen) and Raja Ram (one third of The Infinity Project). The duo are considered to be one of the progenitors of the psybient genre – a genre combining world music with psychedelic trance and ambient. Their musical style combines traditional music from all over the globe and vocals with contemporary western synthesizer-based psychedelic music. Shpongle’s first track, “Vapour Rumours”, was released on TIP Records’ Infinite Excursions compilation in 1996. Their debut album, Are You Shpongled?, was released in 1998 on Twisted Records. Shpongle’s music is heavily influenced by psychedelic experiences and frequently makes use of sonic textures that approximate psychedelic states as well as vocal samples relating to consciousness expansion, hallucinations, and altered states of awareness. For example, the track, “A New Way to Say ‘Hooray,’” contains a vocal sample of Terence McKenna describing the effects of DMT, and the most popular song from their first album, ‘Divine Moments of Truth’, alludes to DMT in its initialism.
To download Shpongle’s song “Divine Moments of Truth” used in the film, click here
Tipper
Tipper makes music for sound systems, with a diversity that ranges from bass fuelled electro-breaks, to hip-hop, to intricately programmed downtempo, to full orchestral compositions etc; music that demands to be played at high volumes to unleash their lethal potential. With a musical background in classical training, and listing influences from drum & bass, to hip-hop, to electronica, Tipper has created his own brand of devastating dancefloor bombs and after club ear-teasers. He is admired for being “streaks ahead,” and his “expertly crafted” productions are dubbed as being “frightening yet refreshing”…”if it doesn’t move you, check for a pulse.”
To download Tipper’s song “Ever Decreasing Circles” used in the film, click here
Lulacruza
Lulacruza is made up of Alejandra Ortiz (Colombia) and Luis Maurette (Argentina). Alejandra is an extraordinary songbird and plays the Colombian cuatro, shruti box, tar and kalimba. Luis Maurette complements with electronic processing and sequencing, as well as percussion, charango, and amazonian flutes. Together they create catchy, powerful and intimate music that is hard to classify, but has been called pop, folk, electronic, latin, ambient, world, new age, ethnic, experimental, and even jazz. Since meeting at Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA, Lulacruza has independently released 3 albums: Do Pretty! (2006), Soloina (2008) and an EP of remixes called Canta (2009). They have played in over 30 cities in 5 countries, growing steadily since their debut in 2006. Their music has been included in documentaries in Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, as well as compilations in Argentina, Italy, the USA and Venezuela. In 2007, they were chosen Today’s Top Tune in Morning Becomes Eclectic KCRW 89.9. In 2008 they were Artists in Residency at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco, CA; and were recipients of the Zellerbach Family Foundation Grant & the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation Grant for their multidisciplinary performances. In 2009, their second album was included in the prestigious “Club del Disco” catalogue in Argentina.
To download the Lulacruza’s and MJ Greenmountain songs “Nina Tusuna” and “Jaguares” used in the film, click here
Maneesh De Moor
Born in the Netherlands, currently traveling, Maneesh mastered the art of sound synthesis and sound sculpturing, after studying classical and pop/world. He specializes in the crossover of ethnic/traditional styles and contemporary atmospheres and grooves. Over the years he has been collaborating with many musicians from around the globe (Sudha, Praful, Bahramji, Deva Premal & Miten, Prem Joshua amongst many others) and released the groundbreaking solo album “SADHANA an ethno-ambient journey into Oneness”.
To download Maneesh de Moor’s song “Raindance” used in the film, click here
Darpan
Darpan travels extensively around the world delivering concerts, sound healing seminars and shamanic retreats. He is a living synthesis of his teachings and is an inspirational speaker and gifted musician. He was born in the Netherlands and was raised and educated in Australia. He graduated from Flinders University with a B.A (Hons) majoring in Psychology and the Dramatic Arts. He spent several years studying the art of meditation in India with the enlightened mystic Osho, and later lived and worked with various shamans and healers in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. Further studies include Transpersonal Psychology and the teachings of Dr. Stanislav Grof. He is also deeply influenced by Tibetan Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. He has recorded several CDs of original music: “Die Laughing” (1989), “Body of Light” (2005), “Temple of Glowing Sound” (2006), “Fly Away” (2007), and now “LoveLight”.
To download Darpan’s song “Peace Invocation” used in the film, click here