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 summer of 2001 the IWF in Göttingen hosted the conference »Origins of Visual Anthropology – Putting the Past Together«. Important representatives of the field came together to discuss the history of the subdiscipline. Three students were equally interested in their visions about »The Future of Visual Anthropology«. They conducted brief interviews concerning this question with filmmakers and scholars such as Jean Rouch, Ian Dunlop, Paul Henley, Karl Heider, Howard Morphy, Peter Crawford, Harald Prins and Jay Ruby.
