DRUGS AND PRAYERS - INDIAN PSYCHIATRY IN THE REALM OF SAINTS
Germany/India, 2009, 57 min
Helene Basu
30.01.2010 18:25
The Sufi shrine of Mira Datar in India is large pilgrimage centre specialising in healing possession madness/mental illness. Recently, it has also become a site of experimenting with new forms of community care in the mental health sector. The NGO „Altruist“ facilitates communication between the mental health department, shrine dignitaries, psychiatrists and patients suffering from diverse kinds of mental troubles who seek help from the saint. Under the heading of „Dava and Dua“ Altruists promotes psychiatric services at the shrine parallel to the cures of possession illnesses offered by ritual specialists. The film documents interactions between different actors at the shrine (patients-psychiatrists, psychiatrists-ritual specialists, patients-ritual specialists), listens to the stories of afflicted persons and presents diverse views on the presumed causes of mental illness as well on the benefit or non-benefit of medicine and/or ritual practices as perceived by patients and their relatives.
Language of dialogues: Hindi and Gujarati
Language of subtitles: English
In the middle of the 20th century a numerous group of Moravian reformed evangelicals from the surroundings of Kloubouky u Brna came to the area of Serbien Banat in Vojvodina. One-and-half-century-lasting existence of the reformed charge brought to its members much suffering borne by a process of big history stretching up to the presence. At the beginning of the 21st century the community of Czech speaking reformed evangelicals is dwelling at the verge of determination as the source of belief has been abandoned by the younger generation due to migration and impacts of modern era. The documentary focuses on historical turning points and fates of several charge members. In the foreground, inner latent godlines of the remaining descendants of the Moravian transmigrants appears which represents collective memory and symbolical universum – sources of preserved ethnicity. Faith, fate, presence as experienced past, experienced past as a garvestone.
Side effects: Portrait of a young artist in Lahore