The terrifying power dance (27 min)
Practiced in Java for centuries, Jathilan is a folk dance that uses the power of music and dance to channel powerful and sometimes terrifying forces. Led by a spiritual guide and a whip-bearing ringleader, a group of dancers ride woven horses in rhythmic unison until they are entered by spirits. Once possessed they engage in a range of self-mortification behaviors until safely emerging from their altered state, left with no memory of the event and no lingering ill effects.
The film, Jathilan: Trance & Possession in Java, combines footage of a number of Jathilan performances with interviews with dancers, spiritual leaders, anthropologists, and enthusiasts. This extraordinary practice becomes more than just spectacle as Jathilan is contextualized within broader processes of Indonesian historical, political and social change and the viewer is provided a window into the subjective experiences of those who participate. Multiple interpretations of Jathilan’s significance ultimately emerge, from an empirical proof of spiritual presence, to a strategy of community building, to a resistant expression of folk identity.
“After I become possessed, I don’t remember anything. If my friends, wife or child watches me, I won’t recognize them.”
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Crew
Robert Lemelson
Robert Lemelson
Alessandra Pasquino
Wing Ko
Dag Yngvesson
Wing Ko
Malcolm Cross
Director
Producer
DP
Editor
Music Composer
Festivals
Parnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, Parnu, Estonia, 2012
Days of Ethnographic Cinema, Ljublijana, Russia, 2012
International Film Festival of Cinematic Arts (Shorts and Micro Cinema) Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 2012
Sunscreen Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2012
Conferences
111th American Anthropological Association Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 2012
Personhood, Possession and Place Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, 2013
Screenings
UCLA Mind, Medicine and Culture Group, Los Angeles, CA, 2011