Ani Rigsang has chosen a nomadic lifestyle in the land of white clouds. The Buddhist nun felt confined in Lhasa, and so today she has taken to the road to reconnect with her country’s spiritual traditions, which are now threatened by rapid modernisation and the reinforcement of Chinese control over the region.
From snowy mountains to green valleys, from monastery to monastery, this documentary accompanies Ani as she makes her way through Tibet. A moving testimony that brings together age-old traditions and legends, this film takes us through stunning landscapes, revealing to us a contrasting Tibet, jostled by modernisation and the upheavals of its holy geography.
Being possessed, it turns out, is exhausting work. Just ask Mambo Edeline St. Armand. While popular culture portrays Vodou as full of curses and sticking pins into little dolls, the religion has in fact played a central role in Haitian cultural identity since the country's birth, a result of the New World's first and only successful slave rebellion.
Even today, on the Louisiana bayous, alligator grease relieves asthma, a buried potato cures warts, and "smoking a baby" eases the pains of colic. Enter this distinctive tradition of faith healing, herbal remedy, and ritual magic as this documentary follows respected "traiteurs" to gather wild teas, brew homemade cough syrup, invoke the saints at home altars, and most of all, heal the sick.
"Signs, Cures, & Witchery" provides a fascinating glimpse of some little-known Appalachian beliefs and practices among descendants of early German pioneers. This hour-long documentary traces Germanic belief systems from Europe to West Virginia, from the fifteenth century to present-day practitioners. "Signs, Cures, & Witchery" opens a window into our ancient past, revealing the courage and resourcefulness of people whose survival depended on their ability to "read signs," cure their own ills, and find explanations for life's mysteries. Local community practices in West Virginia such as witch doctoring, "belsnickling," "shanghai," and folk healing are connected to their medieval counterparts in woodcuts and other works of art. In tracing immigration to remote mountain communities, we learn how expressions of folk art and occult belief survive. This work specifically examines aspects of Appalachian oral tradition and folklore that draw from German culture. This informative, entertaining film is an invaluable aid to all who have interest in religion, psychology, folklore, metaphysical, regional, gender, and ethnic studies.
She’s often depicted as the patron saint of murderers and narco-traffickers, and the Catholic Church condemns devotion to her as blasphemy. But Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, is a Mexican folk saint with a growing following across North America, particularly among the marginalized – transsexuals, immigrants, the poor. A community of Santa Muerte devotees in Queens, New York, shows the life inherent in the worship of Saint Death as they prepare for their annual fiesta in her honor.
Some parents in India practice the Devadasi tradition, selling their daughters into a life of prostitution, often around the age of 10.