Ancient caves, billion-year-old secrets

Caves are among the last uncharted places on Earth. The caves of the tepuis — the tabletop mountains on the border of Venezuela and Brazil — have been isolated for hundreds of millions of years. Exploring these caves is like stepping back in time to discover clues about Earth’s deep past.

Since 2009, La Venta Geographic Exploration team has led five expeditions into the tepui massifs. We discovered tens of kilometers of underground passages, carved in quartz, hiding mysterious forms of life, new minerals for science, and incredible landscapes. Because of these efforts, local indigenous “Pemon” communities consider these caves the House of the Gods: sacred places where living creatures and crystals are fused in a unique organism.

A documentary film written by real explorers

The market for adventure documentaries is monopolized by a few major broadcasters who produce standard narrative stories, often emphasizing faked extreme conditions with actors or well known television speakers. Real geographic explorers and scientists have limited space in these programs. 

Contrary to this approach, we want to produce a documentary film that gives the audience a chance to experience real exploration, first hand, by following a team of real explorers into one of the most remote places on Earth: A journey to the last Dark Continent that we have yet to discover completely. 

Since 2010, teams of cameraman have made several trips to film high-definition footage of this beautiful region: Landscapes, caves passages, minerals, interviews, emotions, hard and dangerous moments, aerial flights with helicopters and terrifying descents in bottomless abysses. Now, all this material is ready to be edited, thanks to the support of a famed Italian director, Tullio Bernabei, who is also an experienced speleologist. Help us bring this footage together into a finalized film!

Why we need your help

Without a major broadcast producer it’s not easy to find the money to realize this project. However, most of the HD footage is already recorded, so we don’t need much to finalize the documentary (compared to what it would take to film an entire production in these extreme conditions, starting from scratch). The budget is mainly to edit the documentary, finalize the audio, execution color correction, digitize old films, and produce the master.

Where the film will be shown

The film will be shown in major documentary film festivals around the world. A DVD will be produced and distributed through the Internet. After six months, the film will be free to stream on La Venta’s website.

You can be part of it

Help us make this happen. Contribute because of your interest in this story, but also because of our unique perks! They could be your first step to enter in the magic world of cave exploration.

Other Ways You Can Help

Some of you can't give financially, but you can still help: 

• Ask folks to spread the word and make some noise about this documentary. 
• Share our story, photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your blog or anywhere, really...