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Film Club: Honoring Life and Death in Balinese Culture
March 18, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

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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.”