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

The Healer and the Psychiatrist

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:44:58 GMT

The Healer and the Psychiatrist
Buy Now: $320.00

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. Although the two healers have never met in person, this film creates a dialogue between them on the nature of mental illness and spiritual affliction - and the shared obstacles they face in providing their services to the people in need. Their commitment and transformative communication offers challenges and opportunities to help address the growing global mental health crisis.

For two years, film director Mike Poltorak used a video camera as anintegral part of his medical anthropological research on traditionalhealing and mental illness in Tonga. After many more years of researchand filming, he learned just how important the relationship between filmmaker and subject is in creating a filmrespectful of Tongan values and of utility for the global Tongancommunity. Through this relationship, his film presents possibilitiesfor improvement in health communication and outcomes for the Kingdom of Tonga, the development of a public psychiatry moresensitive to traditional healing, as well as to encourage culturallyvalued talanoa between traditional and biomedical practitioners.

"The film offers close-ups into the intimate life of therapeutic rituals and allows the viewer to experience the sounds, colors, and affects that compose and make possible healing practices at the thresholds of different cosmologies." — Samuele Collu, McGill University

"This is going to be a valuable resource for mental health here in New Zealand and in Tonga. The reason being the Government has finally agreed that healing ought to happen, or the system, closer to the community. What really touched someone from the front line perspective, is how you had culture, community and clinical knowledge come together and connected up but also the story itself reminded me when the system fails it costs lives. This is something for us to be mindful of." – Pauline Taufa, Clinical Psychologist, Auckland

"The Healer and the Psychiatrist is a very moving and intense documentary that speaks to the value of ethnographic research over a long period of time. It explores the value and limitations of Tongan indigenous and Western medicine. The traditional healer, Emeline Lolohea, may have access to nature’s abundance and the richness of spiritual knowledge but her husband Tevita’s tragic illness speaks to the need for better access to biomedicine. Dr Mapa Puloka combines psychiatry and what is valued in Tongan culture, but how much does the continuity of his novel practice and healing depend on his individual efforts? This insightful and sensitive ethnographic documentary asks us to consider how the treatment of illness and wellness can be ‘decolonised’ even in a country that was never colonised." – Jacquie Leckie, Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ & University of Newcastle, Australia. Author of Colonizing Madness

SELECTED SCREENINGS AND AWARDS

Best Feature Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival, USA, 2020
Commendation, Richard Werbner Award for Visual Anthropology, RAI Film Festival, UK 2020
Best Cinematography, Collected Voices Film Festival, Chicago, USA 2020

Ethnokino-Award of Life Time Recognition, Bern, Switzerland 2021

Ethnofest, Athens, Greece 2021
Mental Filmness, Chicago, USA, 2021
Ethnokino Film Festival, Bern, Switzerland 2021
RAI Film Festival, UK, 2021
FIFO (Festival Internationale du Documentaire Oceanien) Tahiti, 2021
Eyes & Lenses Ethnographic Film Festival, Poland, 2020
Trier Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2021
Hawaii International Film Festival, USA, 2020
Collected Voices Film Festival, USA, 2020
Macquarie University International Ethnographic Film Festival, Australia, 2020
Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival, USA, 2020
Riga Pasaules Film Festival, Latvia, 2020
German International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2020
LIDF (London International Documentary Film Festival), UK, 2019

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A Curing Ceremony

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

A Curing Ceremony
Buy Now: $545.00

Sha//ge, a very young woman about to have her first child, falls ill, probably with malaria. /Ti!kay, a relative and healer, enters a mild trance, without the stimulus of dancing, in an attempt to cure her. Sha//ge lives but the baby is stillborn. Part of the !Kung Series.

This film is available as part of the !Kung ShortFilms set. This collection combines fourteen of Marshall's short !Kung films onto two remastered/re-authored DVDs, complete with a full-color booklet containing photos, writings, and additional information about the series.

DiscOne:
A Curing Ceremony (bw) (9:00)
Group of Women (6:00)
A Joking Relationship (13:00)
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (bw)(20:00)
N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game (15:00)
The Lion Game (5:00)
An Argument About a Marriage (18:00)
Men Bathing (14:00)

DiscTwo:
Playing with Scorpions (5:00)
A Rite of Passage (15:00)
Debe's Tantrum (9:00)
The Wasp Nest (13:00)
The Meat Fight (14:00)
Baobab Play (8:00)

Orthography Note
The group of people depicted in these films are the Ju/'hoansi, speakers of the Ju/'hoan language. Ju/'hoan is part of the !Kung language group; the term !Kung was previously used by the Marshall family and others to refer to Ju/'hoansi. Although the term is outdated, it has been retained here for the sake of consistency with John Marshall's previously published work. The films and their related printed materials also employ antiquated spellings of names and places. For current Ju/'hoan orthography, please see the Ju/'hoan - English Dictionary, compiled by Patrick Dickens and the Ju/'hoan Peoples Literacy Committee.

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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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Fate of the Lhapa

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Fate of the Lhapa
Buy Now: $320.00

Fate of the Lhapa is a feature-length documentary about the last three Tibetan shamans (lhapas) living in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. With no other descendants to carry on their healing practices and a younger generation attending schools, acculturating, and modernizing, these "sucking doctors" are practicing an endangered tradition. Each lhapa requested that their story be filmed so that an historical record would be created. Their fear was that the next heir might not appear until after the old men's deaths. Subsequently, with no lhapa alive to mentor the children, the documentary would be used to transmit the knowledge to the next generation.

These tales of nomadic childhoods, shamanic callings and apprenticeships, cosmologies of disease and treatments, and of their flight from Tibet during the Chinese occupation in the late 1950s will be juxtaposed with images of present-day life in the camp, current healing practices and shared concerns of the future and the fate of their tradition. This is a touching portrayal of life in exile in a refugee camp in Nepal.

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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

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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

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Kau Faito'o

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:12:00 GMT

Kau Faito'o
Buy Now: $295.00

This is a documentary which not only shows the ancient traditional art form of healing, but also tries to capture the essence of being a traditional healer in an ever-changing environment. Traditional healers are shown collecting, preparing and administering herbal remedies that they have passed down from one generation to the next.

Healers discuss where, why and how they gained their knowledge and why they choose to carry on age-old customs and practices despite the fact that Tonga is becoming a nation increasingly dependent on western medicine. Tonga's traditional healers are adapting to niches such as prenatal care and physical therapy.

Interspersed throughout the film are beautiful scenes of water, agriculture, rainforest and people, all of which comprise current island life in the Kingdom of Tonga.

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Lifecycles

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:41:00 GMT

Lifecycles
Buy Now: $295.00

Malawi is a small country in South East Africa that has reached a turning point — it will either sink into unknown depths of despair and poverty or it must grow and change with AIDS as a catalyst. Lifecycles: A Story of AIDS in Malawi explores the themes of sex, witchcraft, poverty, death and religion in relation to AIDS.

With a soulful soundtrack from Bobby McFerrin, the film was shot over eight months and encompasses both the depth and breadth of a culture under siege. Lifecycles captures the intimate stories of people living with AIDS, traditional healers who claim to cure it, and prostitutes who put themselves at risk each night.

Educated and powerful politicians speak frankly about losing 29 members of parliament to AIDS, and one of only thirty-seven HIV positive Malawians then receiving ARV treatment shares his feelings of unmerited privilege.

Lifecycles is both earnest and uplifted as it uses the words of Malawians to reveal a nation for whom illness is mistaken for a witch's spell and physical love is dangerous.

“An intelligent and clear-eyed look at the plague that is devestating sub-Saharan Africa.” — Steven Wise, Take One

“It was very moving… an excellent documentary.” — Barry Berak, New York Times Magazine

Films in the Development Communications Workshop series

If It Doesn't Rain

If It Doesn't Rain: First Return

It's A Young Country: Turkey and Akbank

Lifecycles

Malawi's Green Revolution

Paths of Hope

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Official Selection, Atlantic Film Festival, 2003

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Mammy Water

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:49:00 GMT

Mammy Water
Buy Now: $320.00

Mammy Water is a pidgin English name for a local water goddess worshipped by the Ibibio, Ijaw, and Igbo speaking peoples of southeastern Nigeria. The water goddess traditionally gives wealth and children, compensates for hardships, and is sought in times of illness and need, especially by women. Her various cults are led, predominantly, by priestesses.

This acclaimed documentary shows numerous rituals and ceremonies associated with Mammy Water, while devotees provide commentary. This is an important depiction of the strength of traditional religion in contemporary Nigeria and one of the few academically sound investigations of the role of women in an African spiritual movement.

“The most important ethnographic film on the region to date... I highly recommend it for courses in African anthropology and religion, art history, and women's studies.”
— Prof. Sidney L. Kasfir, Dept. of Art History, Emory University

“Superb and fast-flowing. It's nearly perfect.”
— Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University, author of Flash of the Spirit

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N/um Tchai

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:11:00 GMT

N/um Tchai
Buy Now: $545.00

Tchai is the word used by Ju/'hoansi to describe getting together to dance and sing; n/um can be translated as medicine, or supernatural potency. In the 1950's, when this film was shot, Ju/'hoansi gathered for "medicine dances" often, usually at night, and sometimes such dances lasted until dawn. In this film, women sit on the ground, clapping and singing and occasionally dancing a round or two, while men circle around them, singing and stamping rhythms with their feet.

The songs are wordless but named: "rain," "sun," "honey," "giraffe," and other "strong things." The strength of the songs is their n/um, or medicine, thought to be a gift from the great god. N/um is also in the fire, and even more so in the "owners of medicine," or healers. Most Ju/'hoan men would practice as healers at some point in their lives, and in this film we see several men in various stages of trance. A light trance gradually deepens, as the medicine grows "hot," and eventually some men will shriek and run about, falling on hot coals, entering the state Ju/'hoansi call "half-death."

The film opens with a brief introduction to the role of n/um tchai in healing and in warding off evil, followed by scenes from one all-night dance. The dance begins with a social gathering and becomes increasingly intense as the night wears on, finally concluding at dawn.

Part of the !Kung Series.

This film is available as part of the !Kung Short Films set. This collection combines fourteen of Marshall's short !Kung films onto two remastered/re-authored DVDs, complete with a full-color booklet containing photos, writings, and additional information about the series.

Disc One:
A Curing Ceremony (bw) (9:00)
Group of Women (6:00)
A Joking Relationship (13:00)
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (bw) (20:00)
N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game (15:00)
The Lion Game (5:00)
An Argument About a Marriage (18:00)
Men Bathing (14:00)

Disc Two:
Playing with Scorpions (5:00)
A Rite of Passage (15:00)
Debe's Tantrum (9:00)
The Wasp Nest (13:00)
The Meat Fight (14:00)
Baobab Play (8:00)

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