TV series about Amazonian tribe accused of faking scenes

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

TV series about Amazonian tribe accused of faking scenes
Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga was aired on BBC Knowledge and the Travel Channel
Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 August 2011 19.25 BST

A series about an Amazonian tribe that aired on the BBC has been accused of "faking" scenes and mistranslating interviews to negatively portray the tribe as "sex-obsessed, mean savages", according to accusations made by two eminent experts.

The show, called Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga, was shown on BBC Knowledge in South Africa in June and July last year and by the Travel Channel, owned by broadcasting giant Discovery, in the US in 2009, and made by Paddington-based Cicada Productions.

The six-part series followed travellers Mark Anstice and Olly Steeds journeying to live in the remote Matisgenka Indian village in the Amazon rainforest over a period of several months.

However, the show has been called "staged, false, fabricated and distorted" by Dr Glenn Shepard, an anthropologist who has worked with the tribe for 25 years and speaks their language fluently, and Ron Snell, who grew up with the tribe as the son of US missionaries and also speaks their language.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/02/mark-and-olly-living-with-machigenga

[ZombieHorde]

1. That is the plot to the movie, Cannibal Holocaust.

Except the movie was more extreme.

[county worker]

2. Unless you fake reality most reality tv watchers would not accept the show as real since it wouldn't

fit their idea of what reality is.

My wife watches reality tv all the time. She hates it when I tell her that there are at least a dozen people there that she doesn't see who are filming and directing the reality.

On another note, if the reality shows were tv letting you watch people who don't know you are watching that would be voyeurism which I think is close to invasion of privacy.

[Butch350]

3. S**T! Does this mean that 75% of all written history is BULL****?!

[harun]

4. That was a good series.

[pepperbear]

5. I'll give them this much: if it were an American network,

there would be no comment from the network, and they'd air it over and over.