Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed
Patsy Asch, Timothy Asch, and Linda Connor
1980 | 17 min | Indonesia, United States
The third film in the Asches’ series about Jero Tapakan. Jero on Jero documents the first time the Balinese medium sees herself possessed. Sitting with Australian anthropologist Linda Conner, Jero comments on A Balinese Trance Séance, shot two years earlier during a consultation with a family trying to communicate with a dead son.
Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters)
Jean Rouch
1955 | 36 min | France, Niger
Banned by the British colonial government in Niger and decried by African intellectuals upon its release, Les maîtres fous is Jean Rouch’s dramatic and disturbing film about the annual trance ceremony of the Hauka, a religious sect that spread throughout West Africa in the early 20th century. Adherents roll their eyes and foam at the mouth, eat a sacrificed dog (in violation of taboo), and burn their bodies with torches as they are possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governor general, the engineer, the doctor’s wife, the wicked major, and the corporal of the guard.
Trance and Dance in Bali
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead
1952 | 22 min | Indonesia, United States
One of the earliest ethnographic films made by trained anthropologists, Trance and Dance in Bali was shot in the 1930s by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Edited years later by Mead, it is a remarkable record of the Balinese ceremonial kris dance, which depicts the struggle between the death-dealing witch and the life-protecting dragon and captures imagery of the dancers turning daggers against their chests.
