Entertainment

Avatar director James Cameron was in Sao Paulo on Sunday ( April 11, 2010) to promote the DVD and Blu-Ray release of his film, which earlier this year became the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Cameron spoke at a press conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Sao Paulo, along with Producer Jon Landau and actors Sigourney Weaver and Joel David Moore.

They showed clips from the film and spoke about the DVD and BluRay release, which contains only the theatrical release, without any additional features. Those will be available in a second DVD, to be released later this year.

They also discussed the film''s environmental message and their hope that it would be a wake-up call to people around the world about the importance of respecting nature and protecting the environment.

"We all know the facts, we know about global warming, we know about needing to recycle, we know about pollution and all these things," Cameron said. "We know all these facts. ''Avatar'' doesn''t give you any facts at all. It just gives you an emotional reaction to how nature looks at us. Because by the end of the movie, you''ve gone on Jake''s journey, and you''ve turned around and you''re now looking back at the human species and how it behaves, with the bulldozers, and the bombs, and a disregard for nature, a disregard for the rights of indigenous people, and the wisdom of indigenous people."

While in Sao Paulo, Cameron visited Ibirapuera Park on Sunday morning to plant a tree, the first of one million trees to be planted in 15 countries around the world through a partnership between Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and the Earth Day Network.

Cameron planted the native Brazil-wood tree, an endangered species, together with his wife, Suzy Amis, and Avatar actor Sigourney Weaver.

The launch of the Avatar DVD in Brazil, coincided with Cameron''s second trip to Brazil this year. Last month, Cameron traveled to the Amazon rain forest, where he met with indigenous leaders hoping to stop the construction of a planned hydroelectric dam, known as Belo Monte.

During this visit to Brazil, Cameron will return to the Volta Grande region of the Xingu River, along with Weaver, Jon Landau, and Moore, hoping to raise awareness of socio-environmental issues associated with the construction of the dam.

"''Avatar'' was accepted around the world as an action-adventure film," Cameron said, "but also as a film that had a kind of heart and soul about our connection to the natural world. And so I think that this is an opportunity at the release of the film for home video, to remind people that there is a message in Avatar, and that message is that we need to change the way that we live and the way that we value the natural world."

Weaver also commented on the use of a hydroelectric plant as a source of energy in the twenty-first century.

"This is twentieth-century technology, and it is the twenty-first century," she said. "And I have a feeling that Brazil is such a rich, and beautiful, and resourceful country, that if they give their country time, there will be much better ways of providing this new, greener energy to Brazil, which it very much needs, than a hydroelectric plant, which is very much last century."