Feel Amazonia Short

Deforestation, land invasion, illegal mining, climate change, and conflicts with the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) are topics that frequently surface in the mainstream media. Most of these stories, however, are romanticized, decontextualized, conflictual, and violent. They are knowledge-based stories; while people may know about them, they do not help make them feel. And without feeling, there is no action. In this non-empirical approach mixed with personal encountering, I lay down concepts from anthropological viewpoints of decentralizing the human to create a feeling-narrative of belonging, since people are more prone to engage in support of research funds and legislation once they are actively connected with the issues at hand themselves — usually after encountering, in a non-explorative way, the land. To accompany this story, intending to incite feelings from my audience of Amazonian locals and non-locals humans of Earth, I transcribe this story into an audio-visual documentary that challenges anthropocentrism through personal encountering in the world’s largest tropical rainforest, specifically in Porto Velho-Rondônia, which, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), is one of the four most deforested states in the Brazilian northwest region. This film was made in hopes that people feel Amazonia and start to visualize nature as an equal and not as an endless natural resource commodity.