Record TV Network launches a new reality show to compete for the audience. Named Amazônia, the show has a new format designed by Endemol Brasil.

Scheduled to premiere on January 8, it will be aired on Sundays. Set in the Amazon Rainforest, the attraction combines entertainment and the conventional format of a reality show (competitions, evictions and a final prize) with the promotion of concepts like sustainability and environmental preservation.

Actor and environmental activist Vitor Fasano explains the competition rules as well as the show rules to participants. Record has chosen 12 Brazilian celebrities from the Brazilian art world as competitors. The participant who does best in the competitions, and survives the jungle routine and all the evictions is going to win US$ 550,000, to be shared with the riverside communities assisted by Amazonastur, the Amazonas State tourism board, and Fundação Amazônia Sustentável (Sustainable Amazon Foundation).

Metalivros publisher launched the book Great Expeditions to the Brazilian Amazon, the Twentieth Century. The book features a selection of texts by João Meirelles Filho (his research work gathered over a thousand pages), 250 images on 21 expeditions of the last century (from 25 different sources), gathered in a work of more than two years. The book aims to summarize the Amazonian expeditionary work of names such as Oswaldo Cruz, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Mario Palmerio, Thiago de Mello, Frans Krajcberg, Claudia Andujar, Helmut Sick, Orlando Villas Boas, among many others.
The book follows the work begun by the author in Great Expeditions to the Brazilian Amazon - 1500 to 1930. Released in late 2009, the earlier work presents 42 expeditions to the Amazon, from the first European expedition (circa 1500) to the Marechal Rondon trips in 1930. Many expeditions are famous, such as Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, Alfred Russel Wallace, Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and Johann Baptiste von Spix, but the book also includes lesser-known expeditions, such as travel Mário de Andrade and Euclides da Cunha in the Amazon.

Started in 2010, the Pachamama Festival aims to strengthen the dissemination and audiovisual production in the North of Brazil. It is also a way to ensure free access to South American films that are typically out of large circuits and traditional movie rooms. It's a different cinema, a diverse audiovisual look in the region.

Initiated en 2010, the Festival became bigger in 2011, with six days of film screenings in more than one space. And if in the 2010 edition, Pachamama brought the actor Mateus Nachtergaele for the screening of his film "The Dead Girl's Feast," last year, Rio Branco received big names like actor Gero Camilo representing the film "Eu receberia as piores notícias dos seus lindos lábios", of director Beto Brant, which soundtrack has a song of Shaneihow Yawanawa.

It also had the participation of actor Cristian Mercado who brought Peruvian film "Contracorriente". Cristian is a promise of Latin American cinema and participated in major productions such as feature film "Che". The actor Erom Cordeiro, who was successful as Father Wagner in a local Brazilian soap-opera, was present at the festival representing the film "The Clown," directed by recent national success Selton Melo. In the film, Erom Cordeiro is a trapeze artist who dyes her hair blonde and said to be Russian to become an international artist.

Nómadas

Not only of closed sessions lives Pachamama Festival. One of the guests and partner in this edition was the Peruvian Nómadas Group, a nonprofit association that aims to strengthen the cultural integration of different peoples of Latin America through exhibitions of documentary and fiction films in places where the film can not reach. With an inflatable screen with more than seven meters high, the Nómadas took a parallel exhibition to the neighborhoods of Rio Branco.

The Mostra Cinema no Bairro was held in two suburbs, promoting cultural access in a more decentralized way. The Nómadas team travels to different countries and peasant and indigenous communities in South America, with the project "Las Cámeras de La Diversidad",  sponsored by UNESCO. They spread and distribute the Latin American production, with free sessions, which contribute to the approach of different situations and appreciation of the immense cultural, social and natural richness in Latin America. 

One of the films shown in the parallel programme was "Bróder", the most awarded Brazilian film of 2010. Focusing on the friendship, the story takes place within 24 hours and traces the reunion of three childhood friends in Capão Redondo: Jaiminho, a soccer player on the rise abroad; Pibe, a sacrificed realtor, and Macu, the young protagonist who remains in the neighborhood, flirting with crime.The director of "Bróder", Jeferson De, also came to the festival.

The Otto Show

For the closure of this edition, the Pachamama Festival brought the show of the singer Otto, on November 26, in the parking lot Usina de Arte. The pre-show was up to the Acre band Caldo de Piaba and soon after another edition of the Latin Night, with DJ Malu and Angela. 

The singer Otto is standing out on the national scene by being an artist with influences from around the rhythms of Brazil and merge them with electronic music. He is hailed as the author of an exciting and inventive work, a collage of drum'n'bass and maracatu, forro with rap. Otto, in his musical work also speaks to the cinema, having signed the soundtrack of several movies. In Acre he presented the album "Certa Manhã Acordei de Sonhos Intranquilos".

Judge Carlos Castro Martins barred any work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river.

He ruled in favour of a fisheries group which argued that the Belo Monte dam would affect local fish stocks and could harm indigenous families who make a living from fishing.

The government says the dam is crucial to meeting growing energy needs.

Judge Martins barred the Norte Energia company behind the project from "building a port, using explosives, installing dikes, building canals and any other infrastructure work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river, thereby affecting local fish stocks".

Legal battle

He said the building of canals and dikes could have negative repercussions for river communities living off small-scale fishing.

The judge said building work currently underway on accommodation blocks for the project's many workers could continue as it would not interfere with the flow of the river.

The consortium behind the project is expected to appeal against the decision.

In June, the Brazilian environment agency backed the construction, dismissing concerns by environmentalists and indigenous groups who argue that it will harm the world's largest tropical rainforest and displace tens of thousands of people.

The agency, Ibama, said the dam had been subjected to "robust analysis" of its impact on the environment.

The 11,000-megawatt dam would be the third biggest in the world - after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.