User Reviews

Tawai: A Voice From The Forest is a documentary worth watching, just to understand there are still people or tribes living in harmony with nature, far away from civilization or at least what we think it is to be civilized. I thought it was an interesting view on how those people live in the Maleysian forests of Borneo. Forests that are destroyed for our own selfish way of life, for things we don't realy need, or at least for things where there are alternatives for, like palm oil for example. The most interesting part to me were those people in Borneo, as for the religious and spiritual part of those meditating people in India I found that lesser interesting. The documentary won't change anything though, big corporations will continue cutting down every single tree there is if there is a profit to make. Governments are all responsible as well as money is the only thing they are interested in, and certainly not a bunch of indigeous people living from the forest. A well done documentary that make you think about the consequences of the continuous deforestation of our planet. Worth watching if you still dream about a better world.

This should be forcibly shown to everyone. If we force people to sit through the drudgery that is school, or work, THIS is far more important and enlightening than any science or math class. Anyone saying this viewpoint is naive obviously knows nothing of the world they live in - they simply exist in the paradigm, relying on others to tell them where they live and what space they occupy. You can tell that these people and anyone like them have a FAR DEEPER understanding of the natural world, which goes beyond what science can tell you, especially from these people who are really actors themselves like Degrasse Tyson. Science has convoluted this truth into bits and pieces, material things which they have convinced you that you need. The problem is that, because someone actually shows respect, they are disrespected. Unfortunately these people will also not take up arms to defend themselves, thus they are unjustly forced out of their homes because people need to eat chocolate and wash with fancy soaps. Globalisation IS a problem because we have gotten away from the truth of how the world works, in favor of manipulating it, trying to solve problems with more problems, ultimately only leading up to a reliance on government and useless human beings who have zero interest in actually positively building up the world around them. But to each their own - despite the fact that NONE of us are given a choice - we are FORCED into this god forsaken corrupt commercial and material lifestyle which does nothing but generate trash and waste, including out of the bodies of the people themselves (i.e. people are trash).

I loved this documentary for its deep philosophical exploration of what it means to be a human in the context of a fast disappearing natural world. It was subtle, thought provoking and never pedantic or propagandistic. It was a beautifully told story with dreamy cinematography that made me feel very immersed in each of the different places Bruce Parry explores.

Tawai

A beautiful, haunting and most welcome opportunity to tune in to how the remaining few real egalitarian hunter gather societies relate to each other and their surroundings. How they live and breathe that connection and inter-relatedness, how their way of life keeps them so tightly in touch with the present moment, with each other and the soil on which they step. An insight into what we lose when we fall out of that interwoven way of life and most of all, an invitation to allow in and fully embody the heavy aching pain and frustration that our own daily actions are chipping away at these precious last living examples of true human harmony with nature. Chipping away at the resources that are the lifelines of our planet.

It is pain that we really need to face, fully open to and deeply feel. We owe it to these societies and we owe it our planet and to ourselves, to witness and be present to this process of destruction that is happening to us as one global unit.

Tawai means to feel a sense of connection to our surroundings, in a way like how a baby is connected to a mother and her breast. To know with its whole being that it needs her, that it feeds upon her and will not be able to survive without her and her love.

I wasn't expecting to come out from seeing the film with a sense of being lost....lost because of the way we are losing this world, of what we are doing to our planet, to each other. It is as if human beings have forgotten the connection to earth, to grounding, and how we just are making life so complicated for ourselves. I loved the simplicity of the tribe, with no-one in charge and everyone is equal, a novel idea to us in the west with our cut throat ideas. I have recently held an exhibition called Home/Beit, asking Palestinians where or what Home is to them, one of the responses we had from a Bedouin elder was about a tree, it has roots and if those roots aren't planted in deep enough soil it will never thrive. We just don't have our roots planted deeply enough within nature to thrive fully. One of my comments I said during today's q and a, was that this should be showed everywhere, especially in schools. To me it is a must see. I am left with a sense of yearning for something I can't quite put my finger on, but what I do know is that I have to make changes in my life to have a knock on effect for people I will probably never ever meet, but possibly share some form of DNA with. Like Bruce, I had that connection of 'oneness' in India, it was quite overwhelming and profound...life can never be the same after that. Thank you for this film.

This documentary is not bad per se. The drone flights are a bit of an overkill and the shaky handheld frames are just the way they are. But that is not the main critic. The way Bruce Parry tries to explain the world and its downward spiral towards globalization and claiming to have found a safe haven in a few simple cultures. However, the mentioned cultures in this documentary would also not be sustainable once blown up to continental or even global scale. There would simply not be enough environmental space for billions of people living the same life-style. Bruce Parry keeps on repeating the same mantra over and over again like if he had found the key to all problems of our civilization.

Hypocritical at best.

3/10: Not really worth your while.

... and great sadness. I would have thought it impossible to watch this documentary and not be deeply moved.

What makes me even sadder, in a way, is to read some of the reviews and realise that there are humans who can watch what I just watched and are completely blind to it's beauty, wisdom, and value.

The reason why human society is in the state it's in today is that we lost touch with nature, Mother Earth, and the spirit that is within all of manifest 'reality'.

Having lost touch with spirit, we are left with the illusion that we're nothing more than meat sacks struggling to survive in a relatively hostile environment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Watch this movie if you're a truth seeker. I guess it's that simple. If you're not, you'll probably just get triggered by it.

This is yet again Bruce parry's finest hour.he has brought to us the simple yet wonderful life of panan people ,also there struggles of being forest people and having to addapt there way of life to suit foreigners coming in and destroying the forest for material and monetary gains ,I'm actually very moved and sad and happy that we have fabulous people that show us the true meaning of life Thanks from the bottom of my heart Bruce for making this simply wonderful movie.

Bruce is able to convey a meaningful and thought provoking documentary that not only stems from the heart but challenges our value systems. The sadness that is evoked by witnessing the slow demise of a Hunter Gatherer tribe from the forests of Borneo in Malaysia is very moving. Bruce captures their emotion and shows us the simplicity in which they live their daily lives, in where time stands still and is not merely a western construct but a way of life. According to Bruce, it is the closest experience he has had of living in an egalitarian society. No one tells anyone what to do, there is no ego and if anyone succumbs to one, they soon realise their folly and correct themselves or face the repercussions of not fitting in. Balance is restored and the tribe go about their business as before. Sounds like a plan for the future, if only we could get over our selfishness and greed.

Deep, meaningful and incredibly naive. Globalisation is a monster that has taken over all, to think a small sharing community in Malaysia can resist this onslaught is very simplistic.

This film did inspire deep thinking and sadness that we are not able to live in this kind of sharing community, however this community did not inspire individualism and striving to achieve which are the realities of the world we live in.