Trance Cinema #2: The Power of Possession

Fri, Mar 3
8:30PM
$10.00 RSVP(Limited Seating)

On Friday March 3, 2006 Oddball Films presents "Trance Cinema #2: The
Power of Possession" featuring two rare ethnographic documentaries
including "Holy Ghost People"(1967, B+W) and "Ma'Bugi: Trance of the
Toraja"(1973, Color). Also screening will be "Primitive Man in a
Modern World"(1959) and "Buck Dancer"(1965).
The program begins at 8:30PM and takes place at Oddball Films, 275
Capp St in San Francisco. Admission is $10.00 RSVP is preferred
(Limited seating). RSVPs can be confirmed at: or
by phone at 415.558.8117.
Rightly hailed by Margaret Mead as one of the best ethnographic
documentary films ever made, and a staple of every documentary film
studies course "Holy Ghost People" by the late San Francisco
filmmaker Peter Adair("Stopping History", "Word is Out") examines the
Scrabble Creek, West Virginia Pentecostal congregation whose
fundamentalist philosophy encourages a literal interpretation of the
Bible.
The film reveals the religious fervor, the faith healing, the
trances, the glossolalia(speaking in tongues), the anointing, the
ingestion of poison(Strychnine) and the use of rattlesnakes in the
church's religious services. Shot inside the cramped interior of a
poor, rural church Adair allows the raw power and the purity of the
congregation's faith speak for itself and documents it unflinchingly.
Says one member:
"I could feel the quickening power of the holy ghost . . . I would
dance under the power, and the quickening power would get on me."
Inside the church people surrender to the spirit, shrieking,
flailing, crumpling to the floor, talking in tongues, drinking
poison, and handling snakes as the ultimate test of their faith.
"Holy Ghost People" is visceral and jarring, dizzying and frenetic
and captures the deep faith, ecstatic states and lethal consequences
of their belief.

On the other side of the world "Ma'Bugi: Trance of the Toraja",
depicts an unusual trance ritual that functions to restore the
balance of well-being to an afflicted village community. Clearly
portraying the song, dance and pulsating tension that precede
dramatic instances of spirit possession in the Toraja highlands of
Sulawesi(Celebes) Island, Indonesia.
"Ma'Bugi: Trance of the Toraja", augments the growing body of
documentation of ritually sanctioned altered states of consciousness.
This remarkable film communicates both the psychological abandon of
the trance state and the often neglected motivation underlying such
activities as the supernaturally curing of the chronically ill and
the ascent of a ladder of knives. The ceremony is narrated by the
Tominaa, priest of the ancestral Toraja religion.

"Primitive Man in a Modern World"(1959, Color) by the Moody Institute
of Science is a bizarre and baffling(i.e. "What were they thinking
when they made this?") film "examination" of primitive peoples in
South America from the Mayans to the coca chewing Indians of Peru.
Unbelievable.

Also screening will be "Buck Dancer"(1965, B+W), a rare portrait of
an African American buck dancer and fife player who briefly performs
on the steps of his home in rural Mississippi. The film was made by
the great American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.

Venue:

Oddball Films
275 Capp Street
San Francisco
415-558-8117
www.oddballfilm.com

Off Mission between 17th and 18th, Mission and South Van Ness(Closer
to 18th St)

Additional Info:

415-558-8117
www.oddballfilm.com