From São Paulo to Seattle back to Lima

_{Filming the fourth and final part of ‘A Flow of Consciousness’}

Those who follow my personal social media channel (public since a couple of months back), may have seen the slight ‘hiccup’ that occurred in Brazil as I was due to film the third part of ‘A Flow Of Consciousness’.

With everything suddenly cancelled, I was in a kind of ‘shock-horror’ status, as you might well imagine, being just a few miles away from the Amazonian rainforests to shoot a pretty secluded tribe, but in the end when the emotions had subsided, I understood that not only was there a cultural and contextual misunderstanding that had occurred, but also that living with drone pilots that did whatever they could to save the forests from illegal logging may not have matched the frequency of the rest of the film due to the anger inhibited in its protectors.

The experience also gave me a choice very quickly; judge myself and the condition as negative or wrong, or see it as human differences, and simply overcome the challenge in another way.

So here I was, physically and mentally stranded in Porto Velho.

Now, you may not know about Porto Velho, and why would you? I certainly didn’t. I think the easiest way to describe the place is to tell you that the boy that had also booked a room in the Airbnb a few days prior, literally had to be knocked off his bike, crack his wrist and almost die in order to be stationed there.

That’s how undesirable a destination it is for some.

But my Airbnb lady, Janette, and her wonderful 77-year-old mother she cared for, made it virtually impossible to stay mad or miserable, and instead suggested I join them on a Sunday river-bathe.

The location was over an hour’s drive along a bumpy, red, dirt road, not dissimilar to my childhood summer holiday trips in southern Thailand (there were still almost untouched islands back then, can you believe?!!)

The driver had zero suspension in his car and kept speaking to me in Portuguese, ignoring my translator’s attempts to answer on my behalf, so I began replying back in Italian, which worked wonders (anything but Gringo!).

On the banks of the Madeira River, people sat waist deep in brown, Amazonian river water, drinking beers and sweet sodas. I soon befriended two young girls about 7 and 11 which looked beautifully dark in skin colour, and it appeared to me that they had been adopted by their paler, yet indigenous looking mother. I didn’t ask much as I was more interested in getting buried in wet sand which the girls delighted in, before making our swift departure for the speedboat back to the opposite bank, in order to catch our cab (which didn’t arrive for another hour still).

The next day I decided to do visit a remote and only recently opened up national part with a lake, and as we meandered in between the giant mangroves I couldn’t see a single floating piece of plastic anywhere. Instead, alligators, a family of Amazonian river dolphins and thousands of birds, surrounded us at every turn. It was the most amazing thing ever, and my heart sank knowing that without decent controls there’d be waste lining the shores within the year.

In the evenings I had began searching for another co-producer, this time in Peru. I had visited the country twice before and knew there deep forest areas also, so as the anti-oxidant rich Brazilian sorbet - Açaí (the amazing rainforest berry), I cleared my mind and committed to a different location and story.

The week had kind of flown by, thanks to my new Brazilian family, and I caught an early flight back to São Paulo. After a quick day-stop to Curitiba to visit a friend, I headed up to Seattle for my fourth and final part of the film, on the longest long-haul yet, arriving four flights and 24 hours later. (In order to feel better about upgrading my life from buses to flights due to the filming I donate money each month to growing a giant sequoia tree at The Great Reserve which has the potential to offset a person’s lifetime carbon footprint.)

Seattle looked stunning from out the window of the plane, and where my latest protagonist, a non-mainstream water scientist, Professor Gerald Pollack lives. His house is over a hundred years old and one of the first settlements overlooking a vast body of water.

It wasn’t long before I had discovered Jerry to be a month younger than my father, and made from a similar DNA, having eastern-european parents from Hungary (at that time still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Was this why I felt so close to this person whom I’d only read about in science journals? Or did this connection support the theory that humans reincarnate into similar soul groups each lifetime round?

Whatever the story was at the time, Jerry stood out as one of the kindest, gentlest souls, completely indifferent to commercialism, fame or fortune, and just a hard core truth-seeker. Needless to say, his fourth phase of water theory attracts all sorts, and as we drove and I pointed and shot on my GH5, I felt warm and happy hearing all about the bizarre spiritual and physical adventures, sometimes hilarious, other times deeply tragic, that Jerry himself experienced and continues to experience due to his water mission on earth.

Thanks Jerry, the world is definitely a better place because you are in it.

(An important note - Jerry’s family informed me that Jerry had a stroke a few hours after I had left him, and as shocked as this news is, he is currently doing as well as can be expected being the strong person he is, and is making a slow recovery everyone hopes. I just ask for readers to send prayers towards Jerry, so that he can get back to the world of water science, one of his deep missions, in which he is on the brink of world-changing discoveries in water.)

Back to South America

Unfortunately, having to keep my schedule meant flying almost 5,000 miles back down to Peru, which was only 540 miles away from where I had been in Brazil (guilt trip) but having not want to miss the appointment with Professor Pollack I did the 4 plane journey back to meet my film fixer, Lizeth, in Lima.

With just a few days to experience Lima’s metropolis, I managed to visit the 5,000 year old ancient city of Caral before flying with Lizeth to Pullcalpa, to begin our amazonian journey.

Filming Thomas and Theresa was an experience I had always wanted - up close and personal in nature.

Apart from being the cutest father and daughter tag team I had come across, there was something about ‘setting up’ the documentary through prepping them with our intentions as filmmakers that created new observational method for me that seemed fast forwarded in comparison to my regular method of ‘hanging around’ asking questions till I grow ignored allowing me to shoot fluidly.

As the couple walked about the forests identifying trees and thanking them before extracting their sap and resins at times I must admit I felt strangely like on a set. But in fact the experience was genuine, as Lizeth explained, it was just less ‘purist’ because it was happening based on an arranged timeline. For example, Theresa was telling us about the lady who had cancer, that she had been treating for about six months, who now showed significant signs of improvement as well as her other patients, which was a totally genuine reality.

After the first day of filming we came home to count our mosquito bites, and eat freshly caught river fish. The family would put nets out each morning and haul in a nice catch by sunset ready to roast over the fire. They would keep free roaming chickens which they fed with dried corn also, and only catch and cook them at festive times. The chicken’s grew very quickly on forest freedom and foods and at 6 weeks old looked plump, healthy and strong.

I watched my first ever kill in real life take place, as the eldest daughter prepared the adult cock in a calm way. I felt even more resonant with keeping and eating animals like our ancient ancestors would, but not buying or consuming any other type of meat.  Lizeth explained to me how the tribes, being hunters and gatherers, did not cultivate crops, but relied on catching and eating fish and whatever the forest offers such as wild plantains, yuca and bananas. Cultivation was more of a social creation and the beginning of the end of group and individual freedom and autonomy, as systems could be easily implemented to create means of control and domination in human evolution.

The next morning we boarded a homemade tractor not dissimilar to what you would see in a remote village in Thailand, coughing and spluttering diesel as the village kids ran in laughter, behind the vehicle attempting to board it. In a different area, we were searching another kind of tree, one whose ‘blood’ poured in liters from its severed vine like trunks.

Check out our instagram/aplasmproduction for short explainer videos by Theresa and Thomas, about these magical, medicinal, forest plants.

I may have felt things were staged but in fact they really weren’t as we suddenly faced a mini torrential rainfall that stranded us in the village. So we changed our shoot plans and woke at 3.30am to board a local boat back to Pullcalpa under a super moon that lit the amazonian tree line up like a giant torch.

Just an hour to spare before our flight, unfortunately we could not make a final interview with a botanical university professor in Pullcalpa, but thanks to the universe, our wonderful hosts and amazing fixer, the third part of the A Flow of Consciousness felt as if it was finally ready to take home for a good edit.

A Different Kind Of Filmmaking

My fascination with the variations of the human mind have inspired me to use human protagonists as entry points into their various worlds. Although I often identify with struggles faced by my protagonists early on, I continue to navigate the ‘bigger picture’ the way one might navigate a maze; whenever a dead-end presents due to a specific framing or message, I turn and walk the other way.

I cannot know the cause of this (many claim it to be the typical workings of an ADHD mind although I don’t see the need for an official diagnosis if this is true. I can just say that it makes it almost impossible to generate a script that embodies the hero’s journey, a rule of storytelling that all good writers follow, which trigger the innate, perhaps ancient survival sensibilities of the audience in order to create immediate connection as the highs and lows of their own destinies are projected back towards them.

Or maybe I’m just not a good storyteller :/

And because the films are so hard to define in script stage, they are even harder to fund.

We have spent many hours attempting all sorts of grants and producer collaborations, only to be told that we need to redefine or frame ‘something’ to suit a political, social, environmental or commercial agenda.

So, I decided to begin ’Travel With Thida’ as a way to continue raising funds.

What Is Travel With Thida?

Travel With Thida is a travel initiative in which I invite fellow adventurers, filmmakers or photographers to join me on short bouts of adventure to inject something a bit amazing into their lives (with or without the iPhone / camera).

Although I’m not an agency nor desire to be one, I have been travelling since I was 14 years old, in ways that are integrative, connected, compassionate and culturally rich - a type of travel that is relatively rare.

It could be something to do with learning how to balance, embody and honour two elements of the planet within my body and mind so that I flow effortlessly between the east and west.

My mother was a child of a Singaporean, well-to-do musician (grandma) and a Guangdong, working class businessman (grandpa) that fled communist China to Thailand for a better life. My father was the child of a Hungarian chemist (grandpa) and doting Czechoslovakian jewellery shop worker (grandma) that fled the city of Prague moments before the Nazis invaded and received refuge in the UK. My father grew up in Kingston-Upon-Thames, then travelled the world and settled in Bangkok where he met my mother.

The daughter of two refugees from either side of the planet made it quite a small world in many cultural ways as I felt familiar in Eastern-Europe as well as Far-East Asia. And of course my traditional / non-traditional mother drilled in the epitome of ‘duty’ as they do in Asia, so I fit right in, in central asian cultures too.

Even though I may simply be a tragic creation of a traumatised humanity, trying fit in and receive love from all whom I meet during my filming travels around the world, it’s better to accept myself and say ‘I am what I am’ as my amazing dad always chants the moment I lose my temper with him (sorry dad, you know I love you!), and so I have always chosen to see the best and therefore make the best out of any experience, because in the end I do believe it is always a choice.

So, if you have always wanted to see a bit more of the world and are willing to take your chances with me in that endeavour, my next trip begins May 2026 in Italy to Slovenia and you can download the PDF with all the details here.

Until the next one…

Have a great one!