On Behalf of the Living

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:47:44 GMT

On Behalf of the Living
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On Behalf of the Living unfolds on two levels: an exploration of humanity’s preoccupation with life after death and the story of one anthropologist’s experiment—taking his lifelong “participatory” research on a Papua New Guinea island to its logical, if counter-intuitive, conclusion.

The film is composed of three strands. The first includes footage that Ton Otto filmed with his parents in the Netherlands, where discussions of faith, God, and eternity are argued out ‘en famille’. The second strand takes place on Baluan Island, where Christian Suhr documents Ton’s reunion with his adoptive family. Before long, the two find themselves entangled in complex disputes —both spiritual and personal. The third strand, in a different register altogether, consists of a series of dialogues between Ton and Christian, one-on-one. Through alternating first-person perspectives, they interrogate and challenge each other with rare directness, questioning the very viability of their experiment—and even the anthropological project as a whole. This strand functions as a Greek Chorus, providing a check on the ideas and insights emerging from the main storyline. While probing the realm of the ancestors, the film’s primary source and frame of reference remain the lived experiences of the people—mostly family—that it embraces with its lens.

Writing about his motivation for making the film, Ton writes that he was interested in confronting “one of the great mysteries of human life: its ending. What happens after our biological demise? What kinds of afterlife are imaginable? How do we continue to relate to our dead loved ones? Being an anthropologist by profession I was driven to immerse myself in different cultural worlds, not only to discover alternative beliefs and practices but also to challenge my own ideas about the continuities and discontinuities between the living and the dead.”

"On Behalf of the Living is a stunning film. It is about Papua New Guinea, and the Netherlands and Denmark, but even more, it is about the nature of human life and death. Terrence Malick-like in its scope, it is also the best film of any kind about religion I have seen in a long time…It is a major piece of work."
— Prof. Joel Robbins, Cambridge University, UK

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Ethnografilm, France, 2024

NAFA Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Denmark, 2023

Int'l Festival of Ethnological Film, Macedonia, 2023

Ethnofest - Athens Ethnographic Film Festival. Greece, 2023

European Society for Oceanists, France, 2022

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Descending with Angels

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Descending with Angels
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Islamic exorcism or psychotropic medication? Descending with Angels explores two highly different solutions to the same problem: namely Danish Muslims who are possessed by invisible spirits, called jinn.

A Palestinian refugee living in the city of Aarhus has been committed to psychiatric treatment after a severe case of jinn possession which caused him to destroy the interior of a mosque, crash several cars, and insult a number of people. He sees no point in psychotropic medication since his illness has already been treated with Quranic incantations. A psychiatrist and nurse try to understand his point of view but find that even further medication is needed. In the meantime a local imam battles a stubborn jinn-spirit of Iraqi origin and tries to explain the Muslims of Aarhus that they should stop worrying so much about jinn, magic, and other mundane affairs since nothing can harm anyone except by the permission of God.

The film compares two systems of treatment that despite vast differences both share a view of healing as operating through submission of faith to an external non-human agency — namely God or biomedicine.

"It seems to rain a great deal in Denmark. With therain, angels descend to feed plants, bless homes, wash the city, and generallywatch over its residents. Christian Suhr's ethnographic film, Descendingwith angels, considers what comes down with the rain, as Suhr maneuvers betweenand through Islamic healing practices and the Danish psychiatric system.

The film accomplishes something unique in participatorysequences in which Suhr and the doctors, shaykhs, Muslim patients, and Muslimyouth attempt to make sense of what they are seeing, from footage Suhr has shotto online Islamic exorcism videos.

Descending with angels provides a complex picture ofMuslim life in Denmark, from the diversity of Muslim immigrant communities tothe transcultural spaces between medicine, religion, social services, andcommunity. It dives into and evokes the liminal and transgressive, avoidingtotalizing narratives and burdens of information while also getting at what itmeans to believe, whether in magic or Western medicine.

The film offers a productive point for pedagogical departurefor classes concerned with Islam and Islamic healing, immigration,consciousness and mental illness, religion and science, public health,ethnographic ethics and reflexivity, and visual anthropology."

Maryam Kashani, University of Illinois, AmericanAnthropologist, June 2018

SELECTED SCREENINGS

SVA Film and Media Festival, AAA, Washington DC 2014

Special Student Film Award, Göttingen InternationalEthnographic Film Festival, 2014

American Academy of Religion, Special panel aboutthe film, San Diego 2014

Athens Ethnographic Film Festival 2014

Munich International Ethnographic Film Festival2014

Sardinia International Ethnographic FilmFestival, Nuoro, Italy 2014

Göttingen International Ethnographic FilmFestival 2014

Beeld voor Beeld, Amsterdam 2013

CPH:DOX, Copenhagen 2013

NAFA Film Festival, Bilbao 2013

RAI International Ethnographic Film Festival, Edinburgh2013

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Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Europe / North / Denmark / All Films

On Behalf of the Living

Descending with Angels