An anthropologist embarks on a belief-experiment. After many years of immersive and participatory fieldwork on Baluan Island, Papua New Guinea, Ton Otto wishes to contact the spirit of his deceased adoptive father with the help of his family members. This sets up an intricate cross-cultural film essay on the human impulse to engage the supernatural, for good and ill.
Christian Suhr
Christian Suhr is a filmmaker and professor of anthropology at Aarhus University. His research has focused on experiences of spirit possession, psychiatric illnesses, religious healing, and how film can be used to approach unseen dimensions of human life. He is the director and author of the award-winning film and book ’Descending with angels’ (MUP 2019,www.descendingwithangels.com), and the award-winning films ‘Ngat is dead’ (2009, with Ton Otto and Steffen Dalsgaard) and ‘Unity through culture’ (2011, with Ton Otto). His latest film is ‘Light upon light’ (2022).
Gary Kildea
Gary Kildea is an Australian documentary film maker who has also lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the UK. He has specialised in observational and ethnographic approaches and has often collaborated with anthropologists on film projects. He has held teaching positions in documentary film at the Australian National University, Canberra, and at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Some of his films as director are: The Great Chimbu Pig Festival (1972); Concerning the Lives of the People (1973); Trobriand Cricket – an ingenious response to colonialism (1975); Ileksen (1978); Celso and Cora – a Manila story (1984); Valencia Diary (1991); Man of Strings (1999); Koriam’s Law (2005).
Ton Otto
Ton Otto, a Dutch citizen, is professor of anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has conducted long-term ethnographic field research in Papua New Guinea and has published widely on issues of social and cultural change with a focus on the relationship between religion, historicity and agency. From the start of his fieldwork, he has made extensive use of audio-visual media, and this has resulted in a number of exhibition and film productions, including the award-winning films ‘Ngat is dead’ (2009, with Christian Suhr and Steffen Dalsgaard) and ‘Unity through Culture’ (2011, with Christian Suhr).