Paper short abstract:

In a village of the Republic of Tuva (Siberia, Russia) three women manage the religious organization of shamans "The Three Peaks". The documentary is centered on the main female character and exemplifies the multi-level transformations of post-Soviet Tuvan shamanism.

Paper long abstract:

A documentary film. Ksenia Pimenova (director, camera), Paul Rambaud (editing). Paris, CNRS Images, 2016 (2017 for English version). 56 minutes. Languages: Russian, Tuvan. Subtitles: English. High quality (H264).

In a village of the Republic of Tuva (Siberia, Russia) three women manage the religious organization of shamans "The Three Peaks" and deal with the local clients' requests for healing, ritual purifications, and divinations. The film is centered on Vera, a Russian woman from Moscow who has become a Tuvan shaman. A former New Age healer, she has learnt ritual techniques of shamanism from her Tuvan master in the early 1990s and has inherited his helping spirits. Vera's story exemplifies important questions within the anthropology of post-Soviet shamanism and its multi-level transformations. First, her autobiographical narrative reveals changing conceptions of shamanic spirit election, the power of the initiation, and new ways of intergenerational knowledge transmission. Second, her practice for local clients shows ritual communication as a transformative process that frames the uncertainty of everyday life and progressively turns people's questions into solutions. Finally, from a socio-political perspective, the power struggles between shamanic networks reflect the increasing centralization of post-Soviet Tuvan shamanism that is recognized as an official "confession" in the Republic of Tuva.