The subject of this article is the Apulian tarantist ritual in a film by Italian director Gianfranco Mingozzi. La taranta is a short film, famed in Italy; it is a documentary showing the steps and process of a Salento music/dance exorcism in the 1960s. Based on the contents of the film, the artist makes a complex analysis of the ritual, taking into account its history, paratheatrical roots, and its reception in contemporary theater and the visual arts. Using hermeneutics and cultural anthropology, she finds some remarkably transgressive religious practices, full of suffering, and sometimes downright revolting perversity. She shows tarantism to be "body art" woven into various contexts - religious holiday, social deprivation, and performative process.