Amazonas, maior rio do mundo

Lush flora and fauna, daily life and rituals of the populations indigenous to the Amazon Basin drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries between Peru and Brazil. Long believed lost, the first feature documentary filmed in the Amazon was discovered in early 2023 in the Národní filmový archive, Prague, by Jay Weissberg, director of the Giornate del Cinema Muto di Pordenone and premiered at the festival later that year. Researcher Belém Sávio Stoco gave an account of how the film came to Europe. Film director Santos was a pioneer of Brazilian cinema. His partner stole the film negative, claimed authorship, and without Santos’s knowledge, arranged sales rights for Europe where the film was shown under the title Wonders of the Amazon starting in 1921. It arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1925 where further trace of it was lost in 1931.

The film is an extraordinary document that depicts the natural beauty and huge resources of the Basin, which covers about 7 million qkm. The film also shows the Basin’s enormous industrial potential, a foreshadowing of today’s situation.