Holding tightly: Custom and healing in Timor-Leste

[ HAMETIN HATUTAN Lisan ho ai-moruk iha Timor-Leste]

About the film

(30 mins | 2021 | Language: Tetum)

Healing in Timor-Leste is rarely straightforward. Timorese people acknowledge and embrace multiple pathways to healing in a complex interplay between spiritual care, comfort and personal connection. Through lifelong observation and learning, they trial a variety of practices and pass down their knowledge to the next generation.

Holding Tightly observes seven approaches to healing in remote, rural and urban parts of the Baucau municipality in the country’s east, spanning contexts and experiences from the armed resistance era to the independence period. According to their circumstances and access to resources, families share treatments for everyday ailments, while specialist healers hone their diagnostic and therapeutic skills for more complicated conditions. Medicinal plant, divinatory and bone setting knowledge is continually developed and refined according to need and opportunity. Within this diversity are common threads of shared belief, respect, cultural vitality, commitment and resilience. While working independently from formal health institutions, practitioners highlight challenges and opportunities for mutual coordination.

Filmed over a three-year period, Holding Tightly is a contribution to a longer-term research collaboration between the directors and a diverse set of healing practitioners in the young nation-state of Timor-Leste. The film asks viewers to consider what we understand health and wellbeing to mean, showing how healing is intimately entangled with forms of belief and care grounded in deep connections between people and their environments.

With thanks and respect to the healers who shared their knowledge and experience and the community of Baucau Municipality

KONABA Filme

(30 mins | 2020 | Lian: Tetum)

Buka kura moras iha Timor-Leste dala barak mak dalan naruk. Timor-oan sira rekonese no fiar dalan barak atu kura moras ne’be involve aspektu espiritual, fisiku no pesoal. Liu husi observasaun no aprendizajem ema koko kura moras liu husi dalan oin-oinm no mos hatutan matenek ba gerasaun foun.

Hametin Hatutan Lisan leno dalan buka kura moras nain hitu husi area rural no urbanu sira iha Munisipiu Baucau, husi tempu resistensia armada to’o Independensia. Tuir ida-idak nia sirkunstasia no aksesu ba recursu, familia sira fahe sira nia matenek kona ba oinsa atu kura moras lor-loron nian, kura nain espesialista balun aplika sira nia metodu diagnostiku no tratamentu ba moras ne’be mos karik todan. Kura nain sira halibur sira nia matenek kona ba ai-moruk tradisional, metodu diagnostiku tuir kultura nian no mos matenek liman badain ruin tohar tuir nesesidade no oportunidade. Mezmuke dalan kura moras oin-oin, sira mosu mai iha ambiente kultural ida deit ne’be ema sei kaer metin. Kura nain sira iha komunidade nia le’et lao ketak husi institusaun saude formal, maibe fo ita nia hanoin kona ba desafiu no oportunidade ba koordinasaun.

Hametin Hatutan Lisan, ne’be realiza durante tinan tolu nia laran mak kontribusaun ida iha kolaborasaun peskiza entre direitor sira no kura nain sira balun iha Timor-Leste. Filme ne’e husu ba audiensia atu konsidera ida-idak nia hanoin kona ba saida mak saude? Saida mak bem-estar? No hakarak hatudu katak dalan kura involve mos fiar no tau matan ba ema iha sira nia ambiente.

Ami agradese tebes no hato’o ami nia respeito ba kura nain sira ne’be fahe sira nia hanoin, matenek no esperiensa ho ami no mos komunidade Munisipiu Baucau

Produsaun:

• Camera, audio and directors — Lisa Palmer and Susanna Barnes

• Asesor kultural — Fransisco Almeida and Celestinu Freitas  

• Kontribui ba peskiza — Celestinu Freitas, Fransisco Almeida, Egas da Silva, Jose da Costa, Mariano Dionesio, Luis da Cunha Rego, Herculano Seixas dos Santos and Ritsuko Kakuma

• Asistente produsaun — Quintiliano Mok and Kiku Moniz

• Translation — Lisa Palmer

• Produktor Kreativu — Seth Keen

• Editor — Cormac Mills Ritchard and Susanna Barnes

• Audio mix — Amy Hanley

Suporta husi University of Melbourne, RMIT University, the University of Saskatchewan, the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research and by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project Funding Scheme (DP160104519).