Spiritual Healers - Visions of the Invisible World

Kusum is an ordi­nary 14year-old Indian girl. She lives in Delhi, goes to school and thinks about her future until she falls ill. Kusum stops eating, iso­lates her­self and has severe fits of bad temper. Evil spir­its have attacked the family, says Bhagat, an expe­ri­enced healer. The family seeks help from west­ern med­i­cine but even­tu­al­ly turns to tra­di­tion­al spir­i­tu­al heal­ing under Bhagat. It’s the start of a long road and the spir­its are not easy opponents. 

KUSUM is a moving film about one family’s fight against mis­for­tune, dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, and ill­ness. Kusum’s story helps us under­stand many things that are con­sid­ered mys­ti­cal. Don’t fam­i­lies the world over have sim­i­lar prob­lems? Ulti­mate­ly, aren’t evil spir­its just anoth­er name for what we know as psy­chi­atric prob­lems? Or is ist all about faith and some­thing super­nat­ur­al? What is wrong with Kusum and what heals her are ques­tions that remain for the viewer to decide. 

This film tries to make a con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­est in and debate about indige­nous heal­ing in gen­er­al, by specif­i­cal­ly look­ing at the case of mental patients in the West­ern … read more

The imag­i­nary doc­u­men­tary is a daily chron­i­cle within the temple of Madame Nerval, a famous »Mambo«, as the female Vodoo-priests are called in creole. It is also a por­trait of … read more