Title: Serpent Mother
Runtime: 28 Minutes
Date: 1985

SERPENT MOTHER
Made by Akos Ostor and Allen Moore, produced by Robert Gardner, 1985

Serpent Mother is about devotion to the Goddess of Snakes and the importance of divine female power in the lives of townspeople in West Bengal India. This film concentrates on the Jhapan Festival, the great celebration of snakes. It presents the preparations for the festival, the participation of traditional arts and crafts in the worship of the Goddess, devotional singing, and an exposition of ritual action. Throughout the film the difficult and complex symbolism of the ritual is explained by the participants themselves and this, with the commentary, makes accessible what might seem, at first glance, exotic and inexplicable behavior.

This film belongs to the Pleasing God series of films about how Hindus worship. These films are studies of the devotional practicies associated with three major deities of the Hindu pantheon. They were made in the small, historic town of Vishnupur, West Bengal - a town of temples, crafts and markets, the center of an old kingdom, and a place where daily life and worship are closely intertwined.

distributed by Documentary Educational Resources