Films@PAM: Shadows and Illuminations
About this event
USC PAM hosted a special screening of Shadows and Illuminations, a documentary film about Nyoman Kereta, a rural Balinese man in his late sixties who was haunted by the spirit world.
Dr. Robert Lemelson, director and producer, led a short Q&A following the screening.
Free popcorn was included!
SYNOPSIS:
Shadows and Illuminations was part of the “”Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia”” film series. The film followed an older Balinese man, Nyoman Kereta, as he struggled with the intrusion of spirits into his consciousness. Kereta shared that he had 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 skirted 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 seemed credible or explicable to some, bizarre and extraordinary to others, enigmatic or doubtful to his wife, and a sign of major mental illness to his psychiatrist. The film documented his painful history of trauma, loss, and poisoning, and drew on his other family members’ interpretations of how to understand his struggles and distress. Central questions of how to interpret his experiences and what role a schizophrenia diagnosis entails were explored.
TRAILER:
ABOUT ROBERT LEMELSON:
Robert Lemelson was a cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker, and philanthropist. He was an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He had conducted visual psychological anthropology research in Indonesia for over 25 years. He had directed and produced over a dozen ethnographic films on a wide range of topics, including mental illness, genocide, the sex trade, kinship, ritual, trance and possession, among others. He was the author of Afflictions: Steps Towards a Visual Psychological Anthropology and Widening the Frame with Visual Psychological Anthropology: Perspectives on Trauma, Gendered Violence, and Stigma in Indonesia. He was also working on a book exploring autism in Indonesia through the lens of visual psychological anthropology. View his work at elementalproductions.org.