Documentary Educational Resources - Subject / Health & Medicine / Mental Health / All Films

Wawan's Prayer

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:39:30 GMT

Wawan is an autistic boy from Banjarmasin, Indonesia. Struggling to meet his needs at home, his parents make the difficult decision to send him to a brand new school on another island to receive specialized education and therapeutic support. Together Wawan and his teacher, Yasin, learn how to build an inclusive community for youth on the spectrum that accommodates their differences and celebrates their abilities. As the school grows, Wawan matures into a young man respected for his skill in prayer recitation.

This film is sold as a part of a set which also includes All God's Children.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Toronto, 2023

German Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Göttingen, Germany, 2022

SEAxSEA: Southeast Asia x Seattle Film & Literature Festival, Seattle, USA 2022

Quarter Finalist, Reel-Abilities Film Festival: New York, New York, USA 2022

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

All God's Children

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:39:29 GMT

All God's Children
Buy Now: $460.00

Well over half a million children in Indonesia are on the autism spectrum and have varying difficulty with social interaction and communication, as well as uneven access to resources, education and services. “All God’s Children” tells the story of Idris, a nonverbal autistic teenager living in rural Central Java. Idris’s mother, Isti, struggles to understand Idris and meet their basic needs, especially since the two moved away from Idris’s neurotypical twin brother and biological father over thirteen years ago. Shot over the course of five years, the film follows Idris and Isti to traditional healers, biomedical treatment centers, specialized schools, activist organizations, and community gatherings as they seek the acceptance and support they long for. As the family ultimately finds new avenues to healing and hope, the film also tells a story of how grassroots disability awareness movements, local cultural models of inclusion, and religious principles can unite to better support all members of a community.

This film is sold as a part of a set which also includes Wawan's Prayer.

“All God's Children promotes an awareness of grassroots disability in Indonesia. The film itself has a lot of heart. It’s very empathetic and kind to its interlocutors. We also want to recognize the film for its exceptional technical achievements. Its editing, it’s really truly exceptionally edited. And the long term ethnographic research that went into making it, which is evident in the final outcome. The film is a wonderful example of ethnographic storytelling.” – RAI Film Festival, Werbner Award committee

Selected Screenings & Awards

Commendation – Werbner Award, Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Film Festival, USA, 2023

Best Ethnographic Film, New York International Film Awards, New York, 2021

Finalist - Best Documentary Film, 4th Dimension Independent Film Festival, Bali, Indonesia, 2021

Golden Door International Film Festival, New Jersey, 2022
Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Vancouver, BC, 2019

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Descending with Angels

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Descending with Angels
Buy Now: $320.00

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

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Family Victim

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:52:00 GMT

Family Victim
Buy Now: $295.00

Family Victim explores how families manage a troubled and troublesome member.

Estu Wardhani is a young Javanese man and has struggled for most of his life to achieve a sense of competency and inclusion in his familial and social world. The second youngest of eight children born to an upper-class family living in the rural region of Gunung Kidul in Cental Java, Estu has been 'different' ever since he was a young boy. Estu's actions, and their disorienting power, cannot be understood outside of the cultural and social context within which they have taken shape nor can they be considered apart from the disruptive and painful effects they have on his family.

Estu's problems are interpreted as 'psychopathy' by a psychiatrist, spirit possession by local healers, and as dimangakan or 'spoiled' by his family. Estu himself desires to be a 'big man', and he feels misunderstood and disrespected by his family. His case involves not only his own troubling symptoms, but the striking and extensive interpretive work his family, healers and community engages in while trying to understand Estu's personality and behavior.

This film explores the multiple ways the family interprets such dilemmas, and his tribulations and finally transformations as he matures into culturally defined adulthood.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Kites and Monsters

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Kites and Monsters
Buy Now: $275.00

Kites and Monsters is part of the Afflictions: Culture & Mental Illness in Indonesia series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson.

The film focuses on a growing boy, Wayan Yoga, and is not so much about illness as it is an exploration of the protective aspects of culture that may guide developmental neuropsychiatric processes. At six years old, Wayan Yoga is an energetic boy who flies kites and is obsessed with the monsters of Balinese mythology. He also has various tics, which move his parents to seek treatment. At twenty, he is a young man planning his career as a chef and an expressive Balinese dancer. Ultimately, Wayan Yoga's tics are insignificant to his evolving sense of self-compared to the saturation of symbols, images, and narratives of his culture.

While Wayan must learn to negotiate the kinds of movements, interests, and goals that are culturally appropriate, the protective buffer of his family guides him successfully into normative Balinese adulthood.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Memory of My Face

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:49:00 GMT

Memory of My Face
Buy Now: $295.00

Memory of My Face is part of the Afflictions: Culture & Mental Illness in Indonesia series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson.

The film focuses on Bambang Rudjito, a university-educated Indonesian man in his late thirties diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It explores the "globalized" features of Bambang's illness and recovery narrative — western psychiatric diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, work opportunities in a rapidly changing urban environment, participation in an interfaith religious community, and his family's understanding and acceptance of what Bambang describes as a "mental disability." But it also considers aspects of Bambang's more complex, historically and politically shaded narrative, giving language and a deeper substance to his illness experience.

Memory of My Face illustrates how the residues of colonialism and the pervasive influence of globalization affect the subjective experience of mental illness.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Peter, Donald, Willie, Pat

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:58:00 GMT

Peter, Donald, Willie, Pat
Buy Now: $320.00

Peter, Donald, Willie, Pat is a portrait of four homeless men who live in a shelter in Boston. The tape follows them through their routine at the shelter, and documents their lives on the streets.

Peter is an ex-hippie who collects trash to sell at flea markets. Donald served ten years at Leavenworth on a bank robbery charge. Pat was sexually abused as a child, and has been in and out of foster homes for the last thirteen years. Willie came to the shelter to recover because he lost six of his fingers after spending the night in a snowbank.

The film reveals the complexity and diversity of these men's lives; how in some ways they have been victims, yet in other cases they have succeeded in exploiting the "system." The film is not judgmental. It simply shows how these four men have become members of a new class of survivors.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Outstanding Social Documentary, New England Film Festival

First Place, Athens Intn'l Film Festival

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Ritual Burdens

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Ritual Burdens
Buy Now: $295.00

Ritual Burdens is part of the Afflictions: Culture & Mental Illness in Indonesia series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson.

The film focuses on Ni Ketut Kasih who has lived her whole life surrounded by the complex rhythms of the Balinese ritual calendar. Here, participation in ritual events is both a spiritual mandate and social obligation for women who spend countless hours crafting offerings. Ni Ketut's masterful hand has contributed to her status as a highly respected ceremonial leader. However, the pressures of ritual requirements often overwhelm her, crowding her mind with memories of her difficult childhood during Indonesia's war for independence. This may trigger Ketut's bi-polar disorder episodes, for which she has been hospitalized over 35 times.

Ni Ketut's case reveals the binding associations that may make certain burdens unbearable as cultural obligations, traumatic historical events, and personal experience overlap in unique schemas of stress that trigger cyclical episodes of mental illness.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Robert Coles: An Intimate Biographical Interview

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Robert Coles: An Intimate Biographical Interview
Buy Now: $320.00

Dr. Robert Coles is one of the most provocative and articulate social observers in America today. Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at Harvard University, Dr. Coles is recognized around the world for his social anthropological work with children. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, he has written 38 books and hundreds of articles.

The videotape presents a comprehensive overview of Dr. Coles’s work and thought; while having a life of its own, the tape provides an essential complement to his written works. It focuses not only on the rewards and fulfillments, but also on the difficulties and disappointments of a remarkably full life. The format of the interview is that of a sustained, intimate conversation between Dr. Coles and one of his students and teaching fellows, Bruce Baird-Middleton.

The tape offers a unique opportunity to see and hear at length a teacher of singular inspiration, capturing Dr. Coles’s noted ability to supply the idealism of his students with nourishment and support. Coles shares a lifetime of impassioned inquiry with interviewer Baird-Middleton.

The Harvard Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities reveals the spiritual, moral, and ethical impetus that lead to a career spent studying the poor, distraught, and burdened among society. This work lead to a number of publications, most notably the Pulitzer prize-winning five-volume series Children of Crisis. In this insightful discussion, Coles traces his educational development and subsequent research interests, interspersed with intimate family stories, and provides anecdotes about his influences and mentors: William Carlos Williams, Robert F. Kennedy, Eric Ericson, and Dorothy Day. Humble and contemplative, Coles cites literature, medicine, and travel as inspiring his psychological and sociological inquiries and finds fault with institutional thinking inherent to the academy.

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.

Shadows & Illuminations

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Shadows & Illuminations
Buy Now: $275.00

Shadows & Illuminations follows an older Balinese man, Nyoman Kereta, as he struggles with the intrusion of spirits into his consciousness. Kereta says he has been living in two worlds, the world of his family and community and the world of the spirits, for the past 40 years.

His experiences skirt the borders of cultural and spiritual norms, simultaneously manifesting and exceeding Balinese beliefs about the supernatural world and the possibilities for human interaction with it. Kereta's reported experiences seem credible or explicable to some, bizarre and extraordinary to others, enigmatic or doubtful to his wife, and the sign of major mental illness to his psychiatrist.

The film documents his painful history of trauma, loss and poisoning, and draws on his other family member's interpretations of how to understand his struggles and distress. Central questions of how to interpret his experiences, and what role a schizophrenia diagnosis entails are explored.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

Visit Mental Health to see additional products in this category.