TARANTISM REVISITED
Anja Dreschke, Michaela Schäuble | Germany, Switzerland 2024 | 105 min. | Italian, German, English with engl. subtitles
MONDAY, 12.05. | 4:30 pm
Votiv Kino, Gr. Saal | TICKETS
Austrian premiere
In presence of Anja Dreschke und Michaela Schäuble
Apulia, 1959: Women in white dresses dance ecstatically in a small chapel. They jump around, roll on the ground and climb onto the altar. They are called ‘tarantatas’ and are said to have been bitten by a poisonous spider. Their ‘dancing mania’ requires a ritual exorcism with music.
The essay film TARANTISM REVISITED creates a complex composition that arranges voices from the past and the present with extensive archival material from earlier research trips. A unique correspondence between a ‘tarantata’ and researcher Annabella Rossi brings the golden thread that guides through the film. Tarantism, once denigrated as a ‘female frenzy’, continues to exist today – not least as an expression of rebellion against patriarchal structures.
Director: Anja Dreschke, Michaela Schäuble
Camera: Anja Dreschke
Editing: Anja Dreschke
Sound & Music : Carlo Peters
Production: EMB-Ethnographic Mediapsace Bern; petit à petit Cologne
Voice: Birgit Minichmayr
AWARDS & SCREENINGS
67th International Leipzig Film Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
60. Solothurner Filmtage
Stranger than Fiction – Dokumentrafilmfest Köln
InSience Film Festival Nijmegen
Golden Dove for Best Documentary Feature Film 2024 in the German Competition of the 67th International Leipzig Film Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
Nominated for the DEFA Award 2024 of the 67th International Leipzig Film Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
Nominated as best German documentary for the German Film Critics’ Award 2024.
BIOGRAPHY
Anja Dreschke is a visual and media anthropologist, filmmaker, and curator based in Cologne (D). Currently she is a guest professor for time-based-media/theory at the Berlin University of Arts.
Michaela Schäubleis 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.
