Amazon Journal

the long version

In 1987, documentary filmmaker Geoffrey O'Connor read a four-line report about a gold rush taking place on Indian lands deep in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest. Suddenly his work - and his life - took a sharp turn south. The more he researched the story, the more unbelievable it became: one billion dollars' worth of gold was leaving the Amazon every year. O'Connor set out to capture on video what he believed would be a sadly predictable tale of victims - the Yanomami Indians - and aggressors - a virtual army of 45,000 gold miners. However, this "simple story" proved to be something far more ambiguous and complex. Peopled by real-life characters ranging from an eccentric mine owner toting a solid-gold pistol to a renegade priest who smuggled O'Connor into Yanomami territory against military orders, O'Connor's startling narrative becomes a journey into a contemporary heart of darkness, a compelling and compassionate look at a vanishing people, and a blistering account of the forces of destruction, both human and environmental, at work within the greatest forest on earth.