Urban fakirists

This documentary explores the contemporary phenomenon of piercing through a visual research which lasted a whole year, and which stresses the ritual form of this practice from the simple piercing of the navel up to the staging of a proper “ordeal” where physical pain becomes an instrument in the search for alterated state of consciousness.

The characters in the documentary talk about their own life­‐styles, through “different” practices, defining a kind of new ethno-­‐culture which calls itself neo­‐tribal.

The fascination and the indeniable influence yielded by so-­called tribal or primitive cultures, combined with a typically Western apocalyptical imaginary, has given rise to hybrid creatures, wonderful aliens whose tatooed and pierced bodies rapresent a visible challenge toaccepted models of the human body.

The resort to tribal practices becomes in this way a powerful vehicle to affirm the belonging to a restricted group of people who look at their own roots in order to question their own future, and do so publicly.

Director: Daniele Mazzocca, Marco Rovetto
Photography: Vincenzo Marinese, Gianni Maitan
Editing: Thomas Woschitz
Music: Alessandro Molinari

Production: Orisa Films
Distribution: Orisa Produzioni

Original title: Fachiri metropolitani
Original version: Italian
Year of production: 1997
Lenght: 28′