Trigger Warning: Mental Illness
On the South Pacific Island group of Vava’u, the traditional healer, Emeline Lolohea, treats people affected by spirits. One day away by ferry, the only Tongan psychiatrist, Dr. Mapa Puloka, practices public psychiatry across the region. Though they have never met in person, the film creates a dialogue between them on the nature of mental illness, spiritual affliction, commitment and transformative communication.
Mike Poltorak
Dr Mike Poltorak is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent. His collaborative philosophy of film making was inspired by two years of using a video camera as an integral part of medical anthropological research on traditional healing and mental illness in the South Pacific island group of Tonga from 1998-2000. There he learned the importance of the relationship between filmmaker and subjects to creating
a film with integrity and utility for the community. For him, ethnographic and documentary film making is one part of a journey of research and engagement, which aims at social and policy change. The collaborative and feedback based process he follows is demonstrated in ‘Fun(d)raising-The Secret of Tongan Comedy’ (a film about the Tongan comedian, Tevita Koloamatangi), ‘ One Week West of Molkom’ (a collaborative documentary on volunteers at the ‘No Mind’ festival in the community of Angsbacka in central Sweden) and Five Ways In, where he followed five people through the Freiburg International Contact Festival in Germany. The
Healer and the Psychiatrist is his fourth documentary. How social health emerges as a result of meaningful and transformational social relationships and practices is a central video research interest addressed by all his documentaries.