TARANTISM REVISITED

DE, CH 2024 | Director, screenplay: Anja Dreschke, Michaela Schäuble | Camera, editing: Anja Dreschke | Archive research, additional camera: Michaela Schäuble | Music, field recording, sonification: Carlo Peters | Narrator: Birgit Minichmayr | Colour and b/w | DCP | 105 min | italian, german, english OV with english SUB

Apulia, 1959: Women in white dresses dance ecstatically in a small chapel. They jump, spin in circles, roll on the floor; some even climb onto the altar. It is said that they suffered from a poisonous spider bite and had to beg Saint Paul to heal them. Images of this “dancing frenzy”, which requires ritual exorcism with music, inspired Italian anthropologists to travel to southern Italy. TARANTISM REVISITED follows the extensive archival records of these research trips and visits the places and landscapes where they originated. This cinematic quest is framed by the unique correspondence between anthropologist Annabella Rossi and Michela Margiotta, alias Anna, a “tarantata”. By interweaving images and voices from the past with the present, this essayistic documentary film examines the complex history and diverse forms in which tarantism continues to live on today. (Verena Mund)

©ICPI
×
Acronyms
amer. American English
b/w Black and white
OV Original version
SUB Subtitles
+SUB electronic live subtitling (below the image)
INT Intertitles
Countries
AT Austria
FRG Federal Republic of Germany (historic)
BLR Belarus
DE Germany
CAN Canada
GDR German Democratic Republic (historic)
EGY Egypt
FR France
GB Great Britain
URY Uruguay
BRA Brasil
SWE Sweden
UKR Ukraine
PL Poland
IDN Indonesia
PRT Portugal
HRV Croatia
ECU Ecuador
HUN Hungary
AUS Australia
IT Italy
MEX Mexico
IND India

Followed by a talk with Anja Dreschke and Michaela Schäuble, moderated by: Verena Mund

Anja Dreschke

Anja Dreschke is a visual and media anthropologist, filmmaker, and curator based in Cologne/Germany. Her research interests and publications focus on the theory and practice of audiovisual media at the intersection of experimental ethnography, essayistic film and artistic research. Based on multimodal ethnography, she realizes texts, films, photo essays, video installations, exhibitions and hybrid publications. She teaches at universities, film schools and art academies and works as curator for film festivals, museums, and other cultural institutions. In 2018 she was a fellow at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln and from 2019 to 2021 she was part of the selection committee of the Duisburger Filmwoche. Currently, she is an Interim Professor for Media Anthropology and Innovative Methods at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen. In summer term 2025 was a guest professor for media theory and time-based media at the Berlin Academy of the Arts. More information: www.anjadreschke.de

Michaela Schäuble

Michaela Schäuble is professor for social anthropology with a focus on media anthropology at the University of Bern (CH) where she also co-directs EMB-Ethnographic Mediaspace Bern. As a filmmaker and anthropologist her work combines ethnographic research with experimental essayistic film formats. She explores apparatuses of belief, specifically the role of embodiment and the senses, mediality and remediation in contexts of religious practice and experience. In recent years a central focus of her work has been on ecological perception and the question of what it means to deal with regimes of in/visibility and the marginalization of subaltern voices, grounded in fieldwork in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean. Her films and installations have been screened at multiple film festivals including the HotDocs Filmfestival in Toronto, Duisburger Filmwoche, Worldfilm Festival of Visual Culture in Tartu, GIEFF, and other venues such as Grassi Museum, Schwules Museum Berlin, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, and Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

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