Whipping Zombie

According to statistics, 80% of the population of the Republic of Haiti practices voodoo. In ancient popular belief, voodoo shamans can turn the dead into slaves through the zombie ritual Kale Zombie or “zombie whipping”, filmed here by Ancarani for the first time in history. Hypnotic, repetitive music, performed with percussion and traditional wind instruments, induces a trance in which zombie men whip and fight each other until they ‘die and are reborn’ in an infinite cycle. The voodoo ritual is accompanied by other island imagery, including night footage of a cemetery used as housing by the poorest part of the population, and close-ups of the transformation of oil cans into handicraft items. Ancarani’s characteristic attention to percussive sounds, such as a hammer on metal, lends a tribal, obsessive rhythm to the flow of images.