Dan Alexe has frequented in the 90' the community of Sufi mystic brotherhoods in Skopje. He learned the local languages and became close to those practicing the extremely violent Islamic yoga ritual.
Howling For God won the International Critics Award at IDFA in Amsterdam (1998), and the Award granted by the French Ministry of Culture at the Paris Ethnographic Film Festival (1999).
A Macedonia after the falling apart of Yugoslavia, an underground, unsuspected Macedonia: one of Dervish brotherhoods, Muslim mystics with collective rituals and archaic ecstasy techniques. The Dervishes in whose brotherhood the film is set are practising a sort of violent Islamic yoga, where the members stab their body and face with swords, knives and nails, without any drop of blood being spilt and without any physical pain being felt. The film humorously presents the conflict between two sheiks who dispute the supremacy over the brotherhood.
“They practice an exceptionally violent ritual, about which I had some vague knowledge, but I didn't imagine it was still practiced to such extent: it is that ritual where, on the rhythm of music, they pierce their tongue, nostrils and bellies with knives and metallic rods. It takes hours and hours and these Sufi disciples thus demonstrate the control they have over their body,” Dan Alexe said about
Howling For God.
Details at:
Cinepub.ro
