Our Story

Shabono Media wast rooted on a fortuitious phone conversation between David Good and Andrew Balcof. In 2019, David had been preparing for an expedition to the Yanomami territory in the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest. For years he had been looking for the right production company that would see his vision to produce a raw and authentic verite documentary. But he wasn't looking to be just a subject of a documentary and hand over his entire life rights to another production company, as was the case for many of previous encounters. He was looking for a partnership who shared his vision in building a much larger project to use digital media to teach the world about the Yanomami and raise support in protecting the Amazon rainforest.

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Andrew is a passionate and skilled storyteller. He founded his own production company, Club Xanadu, and he had been working as a director and producer for a scripted narrative film. Without skipping a beat Andrew also shared his vision of producing a documentary using the cinema verite approach to tell a story that was raw, truthful, and authentic. He understood the intricacies and complexities of creating such a film. Hence, Shabono Media was born. With one other partner, Elius Kim, the team produced Wayumi a feature docunarrative that follows David's 2019 expedition to find his mother and reunite the Good family for the first time in 30 years.

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Shabono Media is more than a digital media company. It's a audiovisual portal to the world of the Yanomami where digital media is used share their unique culture. Through blogs, podcasts, speaking engagements, and films, we hope to inspire the world to learn more about the Yanomami way of life and how important it is to protect their rainforest home.

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Our work supports that mission 

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