Ecstasy, Choreography and Re-Enactment: Aesthetic and Political Dimensions of Filming States of Trance and Spirit Possession in Postwar Southern Italy
Visual Anthropology January 1, 2019 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2019.1568112 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Trance and spirit possession rituals in southern Italy, such as Apulian tarantism, inspired postwar Italian documentary filmmakers to develop innovative audiovisual techniques. Filmmakers like Luigi di Gianni, Cecilia Mangini, and Gianfranco Mingozzi combined ethnographic and experimental modes, using high-contrast lighting, montage, abstract sound, and staged re-enactments. Their antirealist aesthetic contests conventional observational documentary and individual focus, instead fabricating a social aesthetic that fosters humanist sensitivity. Compared to Maya Deren and Jean Rouch, these Italian films offer a radically humanist stance through stylized image and sound compositions.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The antirealist audiovisual aesthetic of postwar Italian documentary films about ecstatic religious expressions in southern Italy fabricates a social aesthetic that raises sensitivity to human experience and fosters a radically humanist stance. |
Abstract
States of trance and spirit possession have inspired the modernist imagination perhaps more than anything else, as they typically exceed the limits of visual representation. This article investigates different approaches to coping with these challenges, focusing on the works of a group of Italian documentary filmmakers, including Luigi di Gianni, Cecilia Mangini, and Gianfranco Mingozzi, who used a novel set of audiovisual techniques to explore ecstatic religious expressions in southern Italy in the postwar years. I look into the processes through which trance and possession rituals (e.g. Apulian tarantism) themselves have inspired and initiated innovations in audiovisual documentation by means of combining—or blurring the boundaries between—ethnographic and experimental modes of cinematic practice. Through highly stylized image/sound compositions including high-contrast lighting, wood-cut like silhouettes, montage, abstract sound effects and poetic, partly fictionalized commentary, as well as by consciously making use of re-enactments and staged encounters, these films contest both the realist-observational narrative and the focus on individuals otherwise prevalent in ethnographic filmmaking. Reading the Italian films against the backdrop of the earlier and contemporaneous, yet much better-known trance films of Maya Deren and Jean Rouch, the article argues that their antirealist audiovisual aesthetic fabricates a social aesthetic that raises sensitivity to human experience and fosters a radically humanist stance.