Ecstasy, Choreography and Re-Enactment: Aesthetic and Political Dimensions of Filming States of Trance and Spirit Possession in Postwar Southern Italy

Trance and spirit possession rituals, which often defy visual representation, inspired modernist filmmakers. This article examines how Italian documentary filmmakers Luigi di Gianni, Cecilia Mangini, and Gianfranco Mingozzi developed innovative audiovisual techniques to capture ecstatic religious expressions in postwar southern Italy, such as Apulian tarantism. By blending ethnographic and experimental modes—using high-contrast lighting, silhouettes, montage, abstract sound, fictionalized commentary, and re-enactments—their films rejected realist-observational narratives. Compared to earlier trance films by Maya Deren and Jean Rouch, these Italian works fabricate an antirealist aesthetic that fosters a radically humanist stance, heightening sensitivity to human experience.

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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.