Film Club: Honoring Life and Death in Balinese Culture

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Join us for our online March Film Club event with Ni Luh Gede Sri Pratiwi, Assistant at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UW-Madison, who will present about the short film Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart and ethnographical documentary filmmaking.

Ni Luh Gede Sri Pratiwi (Sri) is an incoming doctoral student at the History Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison researching the religiosity of Bali within the context of external and internal colonialism during the 20th century. She received her Master’s Degree in Southeast Asian Studies in 2019 following seven years of ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia with Elemental Productions, helping to create award winning documentaries such as Bitter Honey and Tajen: Interactive.

Prior to the event, participants should view the short film Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart , available online.

“Accord­ing to Bali­nese Hindu beliefs, the cre­ma­tion cer­e­mony, or ngaben, is one of the most impor­tant steps in a person’s spir­i­tual life. It is through cre­ma­tion that the soul is released from the body to ascend to heaven to be reincarnated.

Ngaben: Emo­tion and Restraint in a Bali­nese Heart takes an impres­sion­is­tic look at the ngaben from the per­spec­tive of a mourn­ing son, Nyoman Asub, and reveals the inti­macy, sad­ness, and ten­der­ness at the core of this funer­ary rit­ual. Amidst ample his­tor­i­cal, inter­pre­tive, and polit­i­cal takes on the cre­ma­tion cer­e­mony, the film pro­vides a per­sonal and poetic glimpse of the exquis­ite cul­tural tra­di­tion and the com­plex emo­tions involved.”