Please note this event is available via Zoom only

Firmly emplaced within a soundscape incorporating movement, prayer, music, human-made and environmental sounds, the film Holding Tightly (2021: 30 mins) closely observes the performance and practice of a series of healing encounters in the Baucau Municipality of Timor-Leste. The lakadou (tubed zither) played in consort with dance in the opening and closing scenes is used by ritual specialists to communicate with the dai (ancestral nature spirit), which will eventually enable good health and more-than-human flourishing. Integral to conveying a sense of such flourishing are the sounds of everyday Timorese life which are pronounced in the film. The combination of rich and lively co-mingled soundscapes with the variety of healing modalities and exchanges depicted allows the audience to be drawn into the complexities and textures of Timorese pathways and aspirations for life-flourishing. Such flourishing emerges from forms of belief and care that are grounded in deep connections and exchanges between people and their environments. In this film screening and discussion, we will explore the ways in which the relational sonic and visual richness of experience recorded in film opens new and productive ways of working with Indigenous knowledge and thinking about ecology.

Professor Lisa Palmer teaches and researches on Indigenous environmental knowledge and practices in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely and is the author of an ethnography on people’s complex relations with water in Timor-Leste titled, Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development (2015, Routledge) and Island Encounters: Timor-Leste from the Outside In (ANU Press, 2021). Working also through visual methods she has directed two films, Wild Honey: Caring for Bees in a Divided Land (Ronin Films, 2019) and Holding Tightly: Custom and Healing in Timor-Leste (Ronin Films, 2021).

Zoom Link:
https://bit.ly/3XEVLe2
Meeting ID: 812 1179 0732
Password: 968025