Releasing the Spirits: A Village Cremation in Bali

1980?

Camera: Timothy Asch

Sound: Patsy Asch

Anthropologist: Linda Conner

Funerals in Bali are particularly elaborate, drawn out with special ceremonies to mark the different stages. This film is described in the opening titles as a collaboration between the filmmakers and “Balinese Participants in a Group Cremation.”

Previously the filmmakers had made a series of four films centered on a spirit medium named Jero Tapakan and had written a book (Conner et al., 1986) that described each film and printed the transcription. Now they have returned to the same village. Many families who had not been able to afford cremations had simply buried their deceased. They feel that this is necessary to purify the souls of the dead and to release them from this earth, and they also want to get ready for a major upcoming Baliwide religious ceremony. So this is, in a sense, unfinished ritual business.

The film uses a technique that the team had been developing in their earlier films. They show footage from key events back to the people and film them as they comment and explain the meanings. This is the sort of after-the-event interview that anthropologists do, but capturing the responses on film gives a special immediacy and authenticity that are often lacking when the interview is simply reproduced on the printed page. (Heider 1997: 265).

Setup Questions

1. What are the Balinese ideas of death and the afterlife?

2. What are the various effigies all about?

3. What is the emotional tone at the various stages of the event?

4. Why do the Balinese have this ceremony?

5. Who seems to know what is going on and what people should do? How “shared” are these ideas? What confusions are there?

6. What is the meaning of the life-sized grandparent figures?

7. As the group approaches the graveyard, there is a brief view of the Balinese orchestra, or gamelan. Can you spot any sort of leader?

8. What is going on in the graveyard scene?

9. Why did Tim and Linda disagree about what was going on?

10. Why do you think the Balinese mount a bird of paradise on the funeral tower?

11.What is the meaning of the two seizures (first Mamuli, then Jero)?

12. Did you notice that Mamuli does as she is coming out of the trance? What do you think that means?