Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Suhr, Christian / All Films

On Behalf of the Living

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:47:44 GMT

On Behalf of the Living
Buy Now: $320.00

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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Light Upon Light

Mon, 2 Oct 2023 11:47:00 GMT

Light Upon Light
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One day, an Egyptian friend gave Danish anthropologist Christian Suhr a piece of advice: Stop focusing on all the darkness in the world, and look at the light instead. Tired of studying the tensions between Muslim and Western world views in Europe, Suhr began to study religious experiences of light in post-revolutionary Egypt.

Light Upon Light explores how practitioners of Sufi Islam search for light at a time of deep darkness and political turmoil. Throughout his journey in Cairo and back home in Denmark, Suhr engages in conversations with friends and acquaintances while also observing and participating in rituals that open the hearts of practitioners to the light of God. While speaking to universal human concerns, the film offers a nuanced portrayal of religious practices as the filmmaker seeks to understand the experiences of those he meets as well as his own experience of divine light.

“Danish director and anthropologist Christian Suhr’s feature documentary offers a respectful yet compelling peek into the surprisingly diverse communities of Sufi worshippers within the Islamic tradition of Egypt.” – Deborah Young, Film Verdict

“It is groundbreaking that a Danish director (Christian Suhr) is part of an Arab production. It is a symptom of a greater transformation in the cultural power relationship between Western and Arab documentary filmmaking – a relationship that historically has been very unequal. For long there has been a hegemony, where Western production companies have led the productions of documentaries also from the Arab world. Here the hegemony is turned upside down.” — Rasmus Steen, Head of Documentary, IMS

Selected Screenings & Awards

Special Mention, Jean Rouch International Film Festival, France, 2023

Opening Film, Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, Greece, 2022

World Premiere, CPH:DOX, Denmark, 2022

International Premiere, Cairo IFF, Egypt, 2022
German International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2024

Dhaka International Film Festival, 2024

Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness Annual Meeting, USA, 2024

Jean Rouch Hors-les-murs Festival, France, 2024
European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference, Spain, 2024

American Academy of Religion, USA, 2023

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

Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) Film Festival, Canada, 2023

Freiburger Filmforum, Germany, 2023

Tripoli Film Festival, Lebanon, 2023

NAFA Film Festival, Denmark, 2023

Mind & Life Europe Conference, ESRi, Italy, 2023

FIFEQ Montreal, Canada 2023

FIFEQ Ville de Quebec, Canada 2023

Ethnocineca, Austria, 2023

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt, 2023

Arabian Nights Festival, Cinemateque, Denmark, 2022

Amsterdam Ethnographic Filmday, Netherlands, 2022

Ethnokino, Switzerland, 2022

Practices, Aesthetics and Entanglements Conference, Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, 2022

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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

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Ngat is Dead

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:11:00 GMT

Ngat is Dead
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What do anthropologists mean when they claim to study the cultural traditions of others by participating in them? This film follows the Dutch anthropologist Ton Otto, who has been adopted by a family on Baluan Island in Papua New Guinea. Due to the death of his adoptive father, he has to take part in mortuary ceremonies, whose form and content are passionately contested by different groups of relatives.

Through prolonged negotiations, Ton learns how Baluan people perform and transform their traditions and, not least, what role he plays himself. The film is part of long-term field research, in which filmmaking has become integrated in the ongoing dialogue and exchange between the islanders and the anthropologist.

“Straddling the permeable genres of ethnographic, participatory, and narrator-driven documentary, this one-hour DVD will be an extremely useful teaching resource. It presents anthropological insights prompted by filmmaking grounded in long-term familiarity and involvement with a community. It also demonstrates the benefits of an anthropologically trained film crew. ...As an ethnographic film that demonstrates the value and developing insights of long-term fieldwork, this is excellent.”
— Mike Poltorak, University of Kent, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 2010

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Freiburger Film Forum, Germany, 2009

Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film, Leeds, England, 2009

Prix du Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel, Jean Rouch International Film Festival, Paris, 2008

Beeld voor Beeld, Bogotá, Colombia, 2008

DIEFF, Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival, Delhi, India, 2008

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Unity Through Culture

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 13:38:00 GMT

Unity Through Culture
Buy Now: $320.00

Soanin Kilangit is determined to unite the people and attract international tourism through the revival of culture on Baluan Island in the South Pacific. He organizes the largest cultural festival ever held on the island, but some traditional leaders argue that Baluan never had culture and that culture comes from the white man and is now destroying their old tradition.

Others, however, take the festival as a welcome opportunity to revolt against '70 years of cultural oppression' by Christianity. A struggle to define the past, present and future of Baluan culture erupts to the sound of thundering log drum rhythms.

"...the various disputes that come forth during the film will provide an excellent teaching tool and springboard for myriad discussions associated with issues involving kastom, tradition, change, authenticity, performance, identity, cultural politics, exchange, and the impact of the West on traditional societies." -- Karen Stevenson, American Anthropologist, September 2012

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