Wiring the Amazon

This video chronicles the four-year struggle to get a remote Peruvian village connected with the outside world. I began filming the project in 2009, while making a feature-length documentary film about the global spread of information technology. I was following the work of One Laptop per Child (O.L.P.C.), a United States-based nonprofit that has designed inexpensive laptops for primary education. The organization is particularly active in Peru, where the government has purchased and distributed hundreds of thousands of O.L.P.C.’s laptops to its poorest communities. One such village is Palestina, deep in the Amazon rain forest. It has only 65 people.

To get there, I took an Air Force cargo flight that departed Lima only every 15 days. The plane dropped me in the regional capital city of Puerto Esperanza, in the middle of pristine jungle. From there, I took a 10-hour boat ride down the Purus River to the small village. Palestina has no electricity, no running water and no roads.