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1-17 of 17
- In one of the largest unknown mass-killings of the 20th century, an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were secretly and systematically killed in 1965 when General Suharto began a bloody purge of suspected "communists" in Indonesia through a complex and highly contested series of events where he ultimately gained power and the presidency. Under Suharto's authoritarian rule, any discussion or memorializing of the killings that differs from the official state narrative was suppressed. "40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy" follows the compelling testimonies of four individuals and their families, located in Central Java and Bali, two regions heavily affected by the purge, as they break the silence with an intimate look at what it was like for survivors after the mass-killings, during Suharto's New Order regime. The families take us through the events of 1965 through their own experiences as they relive and reflect upon how they were and are still subject to both village- and state-level stigmatization and brutalization. Over time, the survivors and their families attempt to find ways to deal with a tragedy that was and is still not openly recognized by their neighbors, government, or the world. Through their stories, the audience comes to understand the potential for retribution, rehabilitation, and reconciliation in modern-day Indonesia within this troubled historical context.
- Shot in the arid landscape of West Bali, Tajen follows multiple narrative threads of the ancient spectacle of the Balinese cockfight. Through attention to the blade, the rooster, and the cockfighter, the film conveys the intimacy, brutality, and festivity of the fight. The film, and its companion website Tajen: Interactive were conceptualized as a visual ethnography to complement Clifford Geertz's seminal piece, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" and bring the study of the fight into the 21st century.
- Kites & Monsters is part of a 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, who, at six years old, 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. Kites and Monsters follows a young Balinese from boyhood to manhood, discovering the influential and protective aspects of culture that may guide developmental neuropsychiatric processes.
- The Balinese cremation ceremony, or ngaben, has primarily been known in the West as either a major tourist attraction that dazzles visitors with the splendor, intricacy, and drama of its performance, or as fodder for long-standing anthropological arguments about person-hood and emotion on the island that debated whether or not Balinese people expressed, or even experienced, grief. According to Balinese Hindu beliefs, cremation is one of the most important steps in a person's spiritual life, and a heavy responsibility to the family, because it is through cremation that the physical body is returned to its five constituent elements and the soul is cleansed and released from the body to ascend to heaven and be reincarnated. "Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart" takes an impressionistic look at the ngaben from the perspective of a mourning son, Nyoman Asub, and reveals the intimacy, sadness, and tenderness at the core of this funerary ritual and the feeling and force that underlie an exquisite cultural tradition. Amidst ample historical, interpretive, and political takes on the cremation ceremony, the film purposefully provides a personal, impressionistic, and poetic glimpse of the process and the complex emotions involved.
- Bali is world famous as a tourist paradise but for some Balinese women the reality is more troubling. Approximately 10% of Balinese families are polygamous, and men in these unions often take multiple brides without their spouse's consent. Filmed over the course of seven years, Bitter Honey offers the first in-depth exploration of these family's lives. Women from three polygamous families tell their stories of coercion, betrayal, and domestic violence and share their courageous struggle for empowerment and equal rights
- Memory of My Face is part of a 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.
- Ritual Burdens is part of a 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. Ritual Burdens questions how communal spiritual obligations may be folded into personal schemas of stress to trigger episodes of mental illness.
- The Bird Dancer is part of a 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 Gusti Ayu Suartini, a young Balinese woman living with Tourette's syndrome. Members of Gusti's small rural community, who do not recognize her illness as a medical disorder, regard her with scorn or pity. Mired in loneliness, Gusti begins to question the meaningfulness of her existence after treatment by western and traditional practitioners fails. The film, which follows her slow, painful, and courageous effort to create an independent life for herself outside her village, addresses the profound impact of family and community's acceptance or rejection on the life course of persons living with a neuropsychiatric disorder. The Bird Dancer focuses on the social stigma of neuropsychiatric disorder and the human suffering it entails.
- Family Victim is part of a 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 Estu Wardhani, a young Javanese man from a highly respected family. Initially, Lemelson focuses on Estu's neuropsychiatric symptoms. Over time, interviews with Estu, his family, and traditional healers, who describe him as "different," "hardheaded," "lazy," "spoiled," "psychopathic," and controlled by a spirit, reveal a more complex dynamic as his erratic behavior worsens and his marriage deteriorates. Only after the illness and death of his father and the birth of his second daughter does Estu begin to "live properly." Family Victim addresses the universal issue of how families and communities interpret and attempt to control the behavior of troubled and troublesome members. Family Victim examines the bi-directional influences between an individual considered to have a disruptive or troublesome personality and his social world.
- Jathilan is a Javanese folk dance that uses the power of music and dance to channel powerful and sometimes terrifying forces. Led by a spiritual guide and a whip-bearing ringleader, a group of dancers ride woven horses in rhythmic unison until spirits enter them. Once possessed they engage in a range of self-mortification behaviors until safely emerging from their altered state, left with no memory of the event and no lingering ill effects. The film, 'Jathilan: Trance and Possession in Java,' combines footage of a number of Jathilan performances with interviews with dancers, spiritual leaders, anthropologists, and enthusiasts. Multiple interpretations of Jathilan's significance ultimately emerge, from an empirical proof of spiritual presence, to a strategy of community building, to a resistant expression of folk identity.
- Idris is a nonverbal autistic boy living in rural Java who struggles to communicate and connect with others in his village. He is supported by grassroots disability awareness movements and local cultural models of inclusion.
- Follows an older Balinese man as he struggles with the intrusion of spirits into his consciousness and explores his experience with healers, the roles of violence and loss, and what role a psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia entails.
- "Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia" is a two part series of films on mental illness and neuropsychiatric disorder in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by anthropologist Robert Lemelson. Volume 1 focuses on 3 individuals of different ages and background with psychotic disorders. "Memory of My Face" illustrates how the residues of colonialism and the pervasive influence of globalization affect the subjective experience of mental illness. "Shadows and Illuminations" explores how non-normative mental events and behavior, including auditory and visual hallucinations, can be understood or interpreted in multiple ways outside the confines of western psychiatric diagnostics. "Ritual Burdens" questions how communal spiritual obligations may be folded into personal schemas of stress to trigger episodes of mental disturbance.
- An intimate portrait of a family in rural Indonesia grappling with poverty, mental illness, and participation in the sex trade.
- "Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia, Volume 2: Neuropsychiatric Disorders" is the second half in a series of 6 ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia. The series is based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson. Volume 2 follows 3 individuals of different ages and backgrounds with neuropsychiatric disorders, and explores the relationship between culture, mental illness, and first-person experience. "The Bird Dancer" focuses on the social stigma of neuropsychiatric disorder and the human suffering it entails. "Family Victim" examines the bi-directional influences between an individual considered to have a disruptive or troublesome personality and his social world. "Kites and Monsters" follows a young Balinese from boyhood to manhood, discovering the influential and protective aspects of culture that may guide developmental neuropsychiatric processes.