Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart
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Nyoman has waited ten years to cremate his father

16 min / 2012

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Synopsis

Accord­ing to Bali­nese Hindu beliefs, the cre­ma­tion cer­e­mony, or ngaben, is one of the most impor­tant steps in a person’s spir­i­tual life. It is through cre­ma­tion that the soul is released from the body to ascend to heaven to 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. Amidst ample his­tor­i­cal, inter­pre­tive, and polit­i­cal takes on the cre­ma­tion cer­e­mony, the film pro­vides a per­sonal and poetic glimpse of the exquis­ite cul­tural tra­di­tion and the com­plex emo­tions involved.

Filmmakers

Elemental Productions

Production Company

Ele­men­tal Pro­duc­tions is a Los-Angeles based ethno­graphic doc­u­men­tary film com­pany ded­i­cated to the pro­duc­tion of films focus­ing on the rela­tion­ship between cul­ture, psy­chol­ogy, and per­sonal expe­ri­ence. Ele­men­tal Pro­duc­tions was founded in 2007 by anthro­pol­o­gist Robert Lemel­son and evolved out of years of field­work and thou­sands of hours of footage gath­ered in Indone­sia since 1997.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

Robert Lemelson

Director

Robert Lemelson is a cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and philanthropist. Lemelson received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles. Lemelson’s area of specialty is transcultural psychiatry; Southeast Asian Studies, particularly Indonesia; and psychological and medical anthropology. He currently is a research anthropologist in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience UCLA, and an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA. His scholarly work has appeared in numerous journals and books. Lemelson founded Elemental Productions in 2008, a documentary film company. He has directed and produced over a dozen ethnographic films related to culture, psychology and personal experience. He is also the founder and president of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, which supports research and training in the social and neurosciences.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

Alessandra Pasquino

Producer

Alessandra Pasquino has produced broadcast commercials, documentaries and special projects for over 10 years. She has collaborated with many filmmakers and artists including: Oliver Stone, Wayne Wang, Klaus Kinski, Gregory Colbert, Leonardo Di Caprio, Pietro Scalia and Matthew Rolston. She is currently a freelance documentary producer and independent filmmaker.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

Wing Ko

Director of Photography / Editor

Wing Ko has collaborated with a who’s who of modern artists, musicians and filmmakers. He worked with Spike Jonze on several music videos and edited the pilot for MTV’s “Jackass.” Wing helped create more than 80 music videos for Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Public Enemy and other top bands of the time. For more than 15 years he has traveled around the world and crewed skateboard videos.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

Adia White

Editor

Adia White is a journalist specializing in video, print and radio. She has worked on documentary film projects from Indonesia to Hawaii as a videographer, researcher and editor. Her writing has been published in The Maui News, Crosscurrents Literary & Arts Magazine, Kia’i Nā Moku Newsletter, The Trail University newspaper and The Lamp Project arts blog. She produces radio stories for KUSP, Central Coast Radio.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

Malcolm Cross

Music Composer

Cross has been a professional composer for film, television and stage since 1996. He composed the score for “Oh Saigon” a feature-length documentary broadcast on the Sundance Channel. He scored the independent shorts “I Dream of Dog” and “Insomniac,” and wrote the theme and incidental music for the television series “America’s Prom Queen”.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart

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Press

Awards

  • Win­ner, Hon­or­able Men­tion for Doc­u­men­tary Short, Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val for Peace, Inspi­ra­tion and Equal­ity, Jakarta Indonesia

Conferences

  • 111th Amer­i­can Anthro­po­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion Meet­ing, San Fran­cisco, CA, 2012
  • Asso­cia­tion for Asian Stud­ies Annual Con­fer­ence Film Expo Con­fer­ence, San Diego, CA, 2012
  • 8th Inter­na­tional Con­ven­tion of Asia Schol­ars, Macau, China, 2013
Festivals
  • Sara­sota Film Fes­ti­val, Sara­sota, Florida, 2013
  • Russ­ian Anthro­po­log­i­cal Film Fes­ti­val, Eka­ter­in­burg, Rus­sia, 2013
  • Win­ner, Hon­or­able Men­tion for Doc­u­men­tary Short, Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val for Envi­ron­ment, Health and Cul­ture, Jakarta, Indone­sia, 2013
  • Frozen River Film Festival, Winona, MN, 2013
  • International Festival of Ethological Film Belgrade, Serbia, 2013
  • Ethnografilm, Paris, France, 2014
  • Ethnocineca, Vienna, Austria, 2014
  • Festival International du Film Ethnographique du Quebec (FIFEQ), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2014
  • Rural Route Film Festival, New York, 2014
Screenings
  • USC Mas­ters of Visual Anthro­pol­ogy Sem­i­nar, Los Ange­les, CA, 2012
  • US Embassy Screen­ing, Wash­ing­ton, DC, 2012
  • UCLA Linda Garro Class Screen­ing, Los Ange­les, CA 2013

Contact

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