Melbourne Australia
Timor-Leste
In Timor-Leste spring water is central to people’s connections to each other and the ancestral spirit world. Underground flows are the carriers of spirits and the 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 honored.
As water resources diminish with increasing population and economic pressures as well as global climate change, Restoring the Spirit addresses a subject of ever increasing local and global importance. In many areas water is not only a vital resource but is also endowed with an agency and power that connects people, spirit beings, place and space. It is also understood as central to people's wellbeing and healing processes. As one outcome of over two decades of ethnographic research across the island of Timor, this film provides an intimate more-than-human account of the complex social and ecological specificities of water-focused societies spread across the one of the world’s newest nations, Timor-Leste. The film explores contemporary challenges to the ancient uses, beliefs and rituals associated with water and wellbeing and identifies the ritual ecological practices through which the use and sharing of water continues to occur and guide socio-ecological systems on the island.