Memory of My Face
Memory of My Face is part of a series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson. The film focuses on Bambang Rudjito, a university-educated Indonesian man in his late thirties diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It explores the globalized features of Bambangs illness and recovery narrative, western psychiatric diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, work opportunities in a rapidly changing urban environment, participation in an interfaith religious community, and his familys understanding and acceptance of what Bambang describes as a mental disability. But it also considers aspects of Bambangs more complex, historically and politically shaded narrative, giving language and a deeper substance to his illness experience. Memory of My Face illustrates how the residues of colonialism and the pervasive influence of globalization affect the subjective experience of mental illness.