"Especially powerful... ventures into territory that no other documentary of the region has entered" - American Anthropologist

"This sharp persona essay distills the contradictions of the decade more insightfully than any other documentary" - L.A. Weekly

"One of the best synthesis of Amazonian politics and ethnology ever." - Beth Conklin, Anthropologist Vanderbilt University

"Beautifully made and painfully honest" - Prof. Emeritus Eric R. Wolff/ City University Graduate Center

Geoffrey O'Connor, the filmmaker of "Contact" and "At the Edge Of Conquest," has produced this fascinating chronicle of political events in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades.

Going beyond the strict documentation of social and political events, O'Connor's Amazon Journal offers a critical, first person analysis of the complex web of misunderstanding that has distanced semi-isolated indigenous societies and Western European populations for centuries. His analysis, backed the anthropological work of Alcida Rita Ramos, reveals how the dominant society's perception of Indians as either "primitives" or "noble savages" resulted in the destabilization of the indigenous rights movements in Brazil in the 1990's.

Some of the other landmark stories woven through this documentary include the impact of a gold rush and ensuing malaria epidemic on the Yanomami Indians between 1987 and 1990, the historic gathering of Indigenous People at Altamira in 1989, Sting's quest to "save the rain forest," the assassination of Chico Mendes, the demarcation of Kayapo lands, the UN's "Earth Summit" in 1992, and the events surrounding the massacre of Yanomami Indians in 1993. The result is a unique, densely crafted personnel essay exploring a dimension of the rain forest story previously untouched by any other filmmaker.

• Special Jury Award, Florida Film Festival 1996
• "Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award," International Documentary Association, 1996
• Margaret Mead Film Festival, 1996
• Silver Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival, 1996
• Latin American Association, 1998

Academy Award Nominee, 1993

"This provocative, valuable film, sympathetic to the natives, is technically excellent and pedagogically recommended for general audiences and studies from seventh grade to college" - Science Books & Film

AT THE EDGE OF CONQUEST looks at the plight of the Waiapi Indians, a small, isolated tribe that came into contact with the outside world in the late 1970's. Threatened by invading gold miners and a Brazilian Government proposal to reduce their land, this documentary focuses on the indigenous leader, Chief Wai-Wai and his inventive, daring response to outside incursions.

The film tracks the journey of Chief Wai- Wai, as he travels from his remote Amazonian village to Brazil's capital, encountering for the first time our world of airplanes, elevators, high-tech gadgets, and skyscrapers. But the real barriers are not physical or technological but bureaucratic and cultural. Wai-Wai doesn't read or write, he doesn't know the protocol of government meetings, nor does he speak the language of the Brazilian bureaucrats. He is a stranger in a strange world confronting the same overwhelming forces that thousands of indigenous leaders have had to confront since the first days of the Conquest.

But unlike the traditional depictions of indigenous persons as pristine populations, removed from the forces of the outside world, At the Edge of Conquest explores the real politick of an indigenous society confronting a larger nation-state on its own terms. As each scene unfolds, Chief Wai-Wai can be seen fighting the role of victim in a desperate quest to shape the destiny of his people. At times resembling a page torn from Alice in Wonderland and, at others, a Kafkaesque nightmare, At The Edge of Conquest offers audiences a unique, often moving, look at a dedicated leader's last ditch effort to preserve his people's homelands.

• Blue Ribbon, American Film & Video Festival ,1992
• Bronze Apple, National Educational Film& Video Festival, 1992
• U.S. Environmental Film Festival, 1992
• Chicago Latino Film Festival, 1992

"He deserves enormous praise for the risks he took to make a straight forward but sympathetic presentation of basic facts" - Napoleon A. Chagnon, American Anthropologist

"I think that all anthropology students who see The Ax Fight or The Feast or any of Asche's films should be forced to see this piece to bring them out of the ethnographic present into the 90's" - Prof. Jay Ruby, Visual Anthropology, Temple University

"A must for all college video collections," - Choice

This documentary, shot in one of the most remote corners of the Brazilian Amazon, graphically depicts the devastating impact of contact with the outside world. Considered to be the most isolated indigenous population in the Western Hemisphere, in 1987 the Yanomami experienced a massive rush of 45,000 gold miners onto their lands resulting in the deaths fifteen hundred Indians, or fifteen percent of their tribe.

This frontier section of the Brazilian Amazon is labeled a national security zone and, during the gold mining invasion, it was declared off limits to all unauthorized persons, including anthropologists, relief workers and journalists. Independent producer Geoffrey O'Connor, taking great personal risks, smuggled himself into Yanomami territory so that he could record the plight of these endangered peoples for the world at large.

• Society for Visual Anthropology, 1996
• CINE Golden Eagle, 1990
• Earth/ Peace International Festival, 1991
• Native American Film & Video festival, 1991
• Latin American Studies Association, 1991
• Gold Award, Houston International film Festival, 1990

"Raises two important issues- agrarian reform and social justice" - Science Books & Film

This gripping documentary is a portrait of one of the unsung heroes of the Brazilian Amazon. Father Ricardo Rezende, the first recipient of the prestigious "Chico Mendes Award." Rezende's work defending the poor has so enraged cattle ranchers in the region that there have been several attempts against his life over the past couple of decades.

This in-depth profile explores the convictions of the religious and political convictions of this liberation theologist while analyzing the larger questions of land conflicts and human rights abuses in this frontier section of Amazonia, an area where slavery, land evictions and political murders have become a way of life. Clandestine sequences, shot during land conflicts, reveal the desperate feudal conditions faced by millions of landless peasants on Brazil's frontier and their desperate attempt to survive some of the most impoverished conditions in the Western Hemisphere.

To purchase or rent Defying Death in Brazil