Restoring the Spirit - Wai Lia Bere Cave

[Kasu Moras iha Wai Lia Bere]

About the Film

Across Timor island there are deep and abiding customary connections between people, their origin houses, waters and the ancestral spirit world. Spring waters and underground flows are understood to be the carriers of spirit and providers of life and well-being to the living.

This film follows Simião, a university student, who had been very ill and had almost died when something had attacked him and taken his spirit. With the water’s help, the family had recovered it, and his spirit had been restored to his body. Through ceremony the debt to the ancestral spirits of these healing waters is repaid and connections to more distant coastal springs are honoured.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

  • Director, camera, audio - Lisa Palmer

  • Cultural consultant — Celestinu Freitas  

  • Narrator - Lisa Palmer

  • Creative producer — Seth Keen

  • Editing and Sound — Cormac Mills Ritchard

  • Assistant Editor - Susanna Barnes

  • Subtitles — Quintiliano Mok and Lisa Palmer

  • Production Assistant - Quintiliano Mok

  • Music - Ros Dunlop recording of Ai-Loos

  • Photography - Quintiliano Mok

Supported by the 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).