Percy Fawcett: does the name ring a bell? He ought by rights to sit in the pantheon of boys’ own explorers alongside Cook and Ross, Parry and Franklin, Livingstone and Mungo Park, Scott and Shackleton. Either side of the Great War, he returned again and again to the impenetrable South American interior, in pursuit of an ancient Amazonian civilisation which he called Z.

This is psychohistory: an attempt to heal Alejandro Jodorowsky’s turbulent Forties youth by reimagining it. The 88-year-old director of the acid Western El Topo, which was loved by John Lennon, still plans a sequel to that surreal, midnight movie favourite of hippie New York, so Endless Poetry isn’t necessarily his last act.

Latin America has learnt from harsh experience just what the legacy of dictatorship involves, when the structure itself may have been dismantled but the psychology that it engendered remains.

The jungle, a region of Edenic fantasy and unspeakable terrors, has always fed the white man’s imagination as well as kindled his greed. Not surprisingly, this is rich ground for the movies – a place beyond time, the home of noble savages and an El Dorado to be stripped of its riches. In most jungle movies, including The Mission and The Emerald Forest, the indigenous population is romanced or demonised, or a mixture of both.

Another splendidly eclectic globalist radio show hosted by Peter Culshaw. The show's featured album of the month is the impeccable The Woman at The End Of The World by the veteran Brazilian songstress Elza Soares.

The Chilean director Pablo Larrain completed his loose trilogy about his country confronting the legacy of its Pinochet years four years ago with No. Striking a distinctly upbeat note after the two films that had preceded it, Tony Romero and Post Mortem, its title came from the unexpected referendum result that deprived the dictator of an anticipated extension of his mandate, and was seen through the story of the advertising men behind that epoch-changing vote.

Actor and director Simon McBurney’s one-man Complicite show has arrived in London after gathering plaudits in Edinburgh and elsewhere last year – before setting off again on a nationwide and European tour. It’s the story of a much more adventurous journey, which took place in 1969 when Loren McIntyre, a photographer for National Geographic magazine, got lost in the Amazonian rainforest while seeking the Mayoruna tribe, the “cat people”.

Listen to the latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic round-up of some recent hot global music releases, including some re-releases of old classics and yet-to-be unleashed tracks including a fair chunk from South America. For your listening pleasure, there are some delicious Afro-Colombian grooves, psychedelic cumbia, new Peruvian sounds and up-and-coming Brazilian artists plus the odd side trip with some Arabic Rock, Welsh-Indian fusion and South Asian violin virtuosity.. 

The British release of the first film made by Alejandro Jodorowsky since 1990’s The Rainbow Thief is an event. Although the Chile-born director disowned that, his reputation was secured with El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and consolidated with 1989’s Santa Sangre. In all, after his 1968 debut Fando y Lis, he has only completed six other films.

1972, a South American revolution, seen through the eyes of a cleaner. Sunset neatly side-steps the usual banana republic videogame clichés by shifting focus. You are neither the Generalissimo lording it over a strategy game, nor the first-person soldier running through the jungles. You're a cleaner.