Tarantism Revisited

Apulia, 1959: Women in white dresses dance ecstatically in a small chapel. They jump around, spin in circles, roll on the ground, some even climb the altar. They are said to have been bitten by a poisonous spider. Images of this ›dancing mania‹, which requires a ritual exorcism with music, have inspired Italian anthropologists to travel to southern Italy. Equipped with tape recorders, film and photo cameras, they tracked down the phenomenon known as tarantism.

Tarantism Revisited follows the extensive archival traces of these research trips and visits the places and landscapes of their origins. This cinematic quest is framed by the unique correspondence between the anthropologist Annabella Rossi and Michela Margiotta alias Anna, a ‘tarantata’. By interweaving images and voices from the past with the present, the film questions the complex history and diverse forms in which tarantism lives on today. The film is part of the media ethnographic research project Tarantism Revisited.