Directed and Produced by Lauren Meeker and Phan Phương Anh
TRT: 25:52
Vietnamese with English Subtitles

Official Selection for the 2022 SVA Film and Media Festival

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Mother, Witness for Me is an ethnographic film portraying the Kỵ Mẫu rituals held by a ritual specialist in a village in northern rural Vietnam. Every ten days at precisely 12 noon, local women, and some from the nearby town, gather in the ritual specialist’s private shrine to chant from sutras to the Universal Mother Buddha (Mẹ Địa Mẫu) and the Bodhisattva of Mercy (Quan Âm Bồ Tát), both of whom the ritual participants refer to as “Mother.” At some rituals, after roughly two hours of chanting, Quan Âm descends and incarnates in the medium and delivers both a general message to the assembled participants as well as individualized counsel to those who need it and request it. These women receive the Mother’s words through the body of the medium, along with blessed money, with reverence and visible emotion. The medium is valued by the participants because she is seen to transmit the words of the mother accurately and because of her strong moral character.

The film combines footage of the of the rituals with footage of the medium interpreting the words of the Mother, as recorded in the sutras, for the filmmakers. The ritual footage reveals the depths of feeling participants experience in the presence of the Mother. Sitting shoulder to shoulder in the cramped shrine, sharing eyeglasses and old worn photocopies of the sutras, these women collectively experience a community of belief that emerges through the process of being “witnessed,” that is, being seen, recognized and addressed by the Mother in front of their fellow worshippers. Drawing on the interplay between visibility (of texts and the body language of the participants) and invisibility (of belief and the Mother), the film highlights how text and experience are intimately intertwined in the everyday practice of religion and belief in rural Vietnam.

Director Bios:
Lauren Meeker received her Ph.D. in anthropology, with distinction, from Columbia University in 2007. She is currently Associate professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz and also teaches in the Asian Studies Program. Her research foci include the cultural politics of folk performance, visual anthropology, and the ritual construction of moral personhood in Vietnam. Her current research is a collaborative project with Dr. Phan Phuong Anh (Department of Anthropology, Vietnam National University). It is an ethnographic study of the relationship between social belonging and moral personhood and how that relationship is expressed and shaped through local ritual practice in a village in rural northern Vietnam. The research focuses on two broad questions: First, how is contemporary moral personhood negotiated, embodied, and constructed in and across popular Buddhist, communal, and lineage rituals in the village? Second, what do local ritual practices reveal about the relationship between heritage, place and identity in post-reform Vietnam? This research has received funding from the NEH and the NSF.

Phan Phuong Anh received her Ph.D. in social anthropology, with distinction, from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2005. She is currently lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Vietnam National University in Hanoi. Her research foci include writing practices in sacred spaces, intangible cultural heritage, and sustainable development. In 2008-2010, Dr. Phan was initiated into visual anthropology as a participant in a Ford Foundation funded project to train Vietnamese ethnographers in visual anthropology, co-sponsored by the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Art Studies (VICAS), Hanoi and the Center for the Study of Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture and Society at Temple University, where Dr. Meeker was one of the trainers. Since 2012, Dr. Phan has collaborated with Dr. Meeker in an ethnographic study of the relationship between social belonging and moral personhood and how that relationship is expressed and shaped through local ritual practice in a village in rural northern Vietnam. In addition, she is taking part in a collaborative study with IRD (French Institute of Research on Development) researchers on the social and economic impact of climate change in Vietnam. The research spans three years (2019-2022) and is funded by AFD (French Agency of Development).