Directors: Jeremy Seifert, Fred Bahnson Producers: Fred Bahson, Olivia Palma
Description:
Though Senen Kaisi has lived her entire life in the Peruvian Amazon, she has never seen a virgin forest. As a young Shibibo woman living along the Ucayali River in the community of Santa Isabel de Bahuanisho, Senen Kaisi grew up hearing about the massive bahuanisho trees for which her community was named. In recent years, illegal loggers, colonizing settlers, and palm plantations have increasingly devoured the Shipibo's ancestral forests, and now Senen Kaisi vows to discover the primary forests of her people's lands. She sets off on a journey up the Ucayali River by boat, then travels by motor car deep into the jungle to a remote Shipibo community on Lake Imiria, where she meets Sanken Kena, an elderly woman who is one of the Shipibo's forest guardians.
Biography:
Jeremy Seifert is an award-winning film director, cinematographer, and editor. He co-directed The Devil We Know. His short documentaries The Church Forests of Ethiopia and Ark of the Apocalypse premiered with New York Times Op-Docs. Living Off America’s Waste won over 30 awards at festivals around the world and premiered on Netflix. Jeremy is also the creator and director of Truefolk, a series featuring master makers and artisans. Jeremy has directed and DP’d over 20 films for nonprofits around the world, and his commercial clients include Ogilvy, Gaia Herbs, Charlotte’s Web CBD, and Blizzard Entertainment, and he is a frequent contributor to Emergence Magazine.
Fred Bahnson is author of Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith. He directs the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being Program at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. A former Kellogg Food & Community fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, he is the recipient of a 2012 North Carolina Arts Council fellowship in creative nonfiction.
Olivia Palma is an indigenous relations specialist, project manager, and producer. She takes a culturally integrated approach to her work and, from years of on-the-ground experience, can understand the ways of life of the indigenous communities she works with.
