Embrace of the Serpent with Khyentse Norbu
Every two months, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche know as Khyentse Norbu of the Khyentse Foundation provides a personal suggestion of something he enjoys, such as a book, movie, piece of music, coffee shop or bookstore.
This time, the feature film being discussed is Embrace of the Serpent (2015), a Spanish-language adventure drama directed by Ciro Guerra and written by Guerra and Jacques Toulemonde Vidal.
The movie is shot almost entirely in black and white and follows two journeys made 30 years apart by an indigenous shaman named Karamakate in the Colombian Amazonian jungle.
One journey is with Theo, a German ethnographer, and the other with Evan, an American botanist, both of whom are searching for the rare plant yakruna.
The film was inspired by the travel diaries of Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes, and is dedicated to lost Amazonian cultures.
