An Indonesian perspective on madness in a globalizing world (22 min)
The film focuses on Bambang Rudjito, a university-educated Indonesian man in his late thirties diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It explores the “globalized” features of Bambang’s illness and recovery narrative — western psychiatric diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, work opportunities in a rapidly changing urban environment, participation in an interfaith religious community, and his family’s understanding and acceptance of what Bambang describes as a “mental disability.”
But it also considers aspects of Bambang’s more complex, historically and politically shaded narrative, giving language and a deeper substance to his illness experience. Memory of My Face illustrates how the residues of colonialism and the pervasive influence of globalization affect the subjective experience of mental illness.
“According to the doctor, I suffered from schizo...not ‘phrenia’ but ‘affective.’ Just change the ‘a’ to an ‘e’ and it becomes ‘effective,’ right?”
Purchase Film
Crew
Director
Producer
DP
Assistant Camera
Consulting Editor
Editor
Music Composer
Robert Lemelson
Robert Lemelson
Alessandra Pasquino
Dag Yngvesson
Wing Ko
Pietro Scalia
Sandra Angeline
Chisako Yokoyama
Malcolm Cross
Awards
Winner, Award of Excellence, The Indie Fest, 2011
Special Mention, Caserta Ethnographic Film Festival, Caserta, Italy, 2012
Semi-Finalist, Moondance Film Festival, Boulder, CO, 2012
Conferences
World Congress of Cultural Psychiatry “Mental capital, mental disorders, resilience and wellbeing through the life-course” Conference, London, UK, 2012
UCLA Indonesian Studies Conference 2012 “Indonesia in Memory of My Face, Global and Transnational Perspective”, Los Angeles, CA, 2012
University of Michigan, Culture, Mind and the Brain Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, 2012
World Mental Health Congress, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013
Asian Conference on Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences: “Connectedness and Alienation: The 21st Century Enigma,” Osaka, Japan, 2013
International Conference on Psychology in Health, Educational, Social, and Organizational Settings: “Psychology in Changing Global Contexts”, Surabaya, Indonesia, 2013
Festivals
Northern California International Film Festival, Modesto, CA, 2013
Amoroso Teatro Film Festival, Italy, 2013
San Francisco Shorts Film Festival, San Francisco, CA, 2012
Afflictions 2011, Cinesol Film Festival, Harlingen, TX, 2012
Screenings
USC, Masters of Visual Anthropology Seminar, Los Angeles, CA, 2011
Rutgers University, Comparative Religion Class, Newark, NJ, 2012
McGill University Global Mental Health Research Workshop, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2011
Cal State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2011
University of Chicago, Clinical Ethnography Workshop, Chicago, IL, 2011