hurrengoa
tarantela    Taranto is the inland area in the heel of the boot
of Italy. The wolf spider (lycosa tarantula) lives in that beautiful Mediterranean countryside and that’s where it’s name comes from. If a tarantula bites you, its poison attacks your nervous system and makes you hysterical. This is called “tarantism”. It is known that in Roman times a special type of exorcism was used to cure tarantism. And in the 16th and 17th centuries music started to be used in those exorcisms. People in a state of tarantism were made to dance to lively, changing music. Thanks to dancing, the ill people started sweating, got tired and, in that way, their tarantism was alleviated. That type of music and dancing was called Tarantela.

Unai Rosende and Aitor Auzmendi have made a film called Tarantela, a short cartoon which transports us into the tarantism which those hairy spiders create. Crazy about cinema as they are, they have recreated Coppola’s Sicilian scenery from The Godfather scene by scene, David Lynch’s uneasy atmosphere, Tim Burton’s dark tenderness and Melies’ surrealist games to make this great little film. This free, wonderful film goes to show that there is cinema which is an alternative to the mass-viewer, best-selling, media promoted, red carpet cinema.

vimeo.com/54093834
pasahitza / password: tarantellashortfilm