Cinema can capture life in motion. Cinema does not film concept or abstract ideas –although it constantly refers to them – but specific situations in which individuals interact with each other and with their environment. As such, cinema is a strong tool and language for grasping – and evoke – the inner temporality of the healing process.
This section will reunite ethnographic films exploring the connections between healing, trance and transnationality. By grouping them in a creative way, our aim is to show their continuities and discontinuities between these films at a methodological and theoretical level. For instance: when we film a ritual, do we become part of it, and if so, to what extent? How can we film what cannot be actually seen (like spirits)?
Special attention will be made on the ethical issues involved in the act of filming and in the editing process. How can we ensure explicit consent when we film people in trance or suffering from a disease? And what about the work with spirits, how can they "manifest" their "approval" to be part of a film?
- Roger Canals
María Lionza in Barcelona
Roger Canals, 2016, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, 96'
Production: Wenner-Gren Foundation
Co-production: Jordi Orobitg Produccions
Editing: Jordi Orobitg
Explore the film's website and exhibition: http://va-marialionza.com
Roger Canals, 2019, University of Oxford, 90'
Original idea and research: Ramon Sarró and Marina Temudo.
Watch the full film on the Journal of Anthropological Films website: https://boap.uib.no/index.php/jaf/article/view/3306/3295
Mattijs van de Port, 2016, 72 min
What is it that you film when you film a spirit? Shot in Bahia (Brazil), The Possibility of Spirits is an essay film that keeps the baffling mystery of spirit possession center stage. In a poetic assemblage of images and words, it offers an alternative for the kind of documentary that either exoticizes spirit possession in spectacular imagery, or extinguishes the wonder of the phenomenon in explanatory prose. Possession ceremonies are filmed in close up, but the images first and foremost reveal that we don't know what it is that we are looking at.
Words — of the filmmaker, as well as of his interlocutors — are allowed to drift out of meaning. Trying to grasp the phenomenon, they become silence, or laughter, or screaming.
Paying tribute to the extra-ordinariness of its subject matter, this film invites viewers to allow themselves to be confused and — in that confusion — consider the possibility of spirits.
Potolahi Productions
Distributed by Documentary Educational Resources
Interactive i-doc: https://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology-conservation/projectpouono/
On the South Pacific Island group of Vava’u, the traditional healer Emeline Lolohea treats people affected by spirits. One day away by ferry, the only Tongan Psychiatrist Dr Mapa Puloka has established a public psychiatry well known across the region. Though they have never met in person, this film creates a dialogue between them on the nature of mental illness and spiritual affliction. Their commitment and transformative communication offers challenges and opportunities to help address the growing global mental health crisis.
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A mother is caring for her son at a healing shrine on the edge of a village in the central belt of Ghana. In another village, a father has taken his son to several Christian and traditional healers as well as a psychiatric hospital. Both are driven by the need to find a cure for the mental illness which has afflicted their children. Meanwhile mental health nurses in Ghana are looking for ways to join together with healers in their communities. They know these healers are popular and respect their beliefs, but they are concerned that some use chains to restrain their patients. How can they work together with healers without threatening their reputation and livelihoods? And how can nurses offer treatment without access to medication and transport? This film provides an insight into how healers and health practitioners come together in the face of these challenges to reach the same goal of healing and recovery.
Part of “Together for Mental Health”, an interdisciplinary, international collaboration between Indonesia, Ghana and the UK. Using visual methods, it explores examples of collaboration between mental health workers and pluralistic healing approaches and their impact on preventing human rights abuse and improving care for people living with mental illness experience.
As a nation of 270 million, Indonesia is facing the grave task of caring for millions of people living with mental illness. Many have experienced human rights abuses in their lifetime. In communities rich in their traditional and religious values, Indonesian faith-based or traditional healers and mental health professionals work tirelessly to improve mental health care and prevent human rights abuses. In the face of scepticism, can they negotiate their way to achieve successful collaboration instead of being antagonists?
‘Harmoni: Healing together’ explores these collaborative practices in three islands - Java, where the communities are predominantly Islamic, Hindu communities in Bali, and Catholic communities in Flores. The dream of a family home, making sense of illness and spirits through rituals, dilemmas over medicine use, and the embrace of co-existing spiritual and medical perspectives are some of the main themes presented in this innovative film.
Part of “Together for Mental Health”, an interdisciplinary, international collaboration between Indonesia, Ghana and the UK. Using visual methods, it explores examples of collaboration between mental health workers and pluralistic healing approaches and their impact on preventing human rights abuse and improving care for people living with mental illness experience.
Greenfield, Sidney M., Spirits, Medicine, and Charity: A Brazilian Woman's Cure for Cancer Written, produced and directed by Sidney M. Greenfield at the Media Resource Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1995, 39.36 Min.
Greenfield, Sidney M., José Carlos and His Spirits: The Ritual Initiation of a Zelador dos Orixás. Produced and edited by Sidney M. Greenfield and John B. Gray at the Educational Communications Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Written by Sidney M. Greenfield, 1989, One hour and 24 Min.
Greenfield, Sidney M., The Return of Dr. Fritz: Healing by the Spirits in Brazil. Produced and edited by Sidney M. Greenfield and John B. Gray at the Educational Communications Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Written and narrated by Sidney M. Greenfield, 1988, 63 Min.
Greenfield, Sidney M., A Brazilian Pilgrimage: The 'Festa de São Francisco' in Canindé. Produced and edited by Sidney M. Greenfield and John B. Gray at the Educational Communications Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Written and narrated by Sidney M. Greenfield, 1985. Two versions, one 28 Min, the other 56 Min.
Greenfield, Sidney M., Spiritist Healing in Brazil. Produced by Sidney M. Greenfield at the Educational Communications Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Written, narrated and edited by Sidney M. Greenfield, 1985. 28 Min.
© HEAL Network for the Ethnography of Healing