02.00.00

Title sequence. Tattooing to music -

The Body Piercers

00.03.01

Graphic

To express urban feeling at the end of the millennium, the Body Piercers claim the status of spokespeople.

00.03.08

In tribal style, they are initiated through rituals, where  the manipulation of the body plays a key role.

00.03.15

Some of the images in this film might disturb those of a sensitive disposition.

00.03.20

But they're not images of pain or suffering.

00.03.24

On the contrary, all the actions to follow are voluntary, conscious and deeply felt.

00.03.38

Group of people playing musical instruments

This squat in Portugal is typical of the punctured generation. Anarchy is the only rule. Live to the beat of improvised music.

00.03.49

Paulo reading aloud.

Love, health and freedom, autonomy, direct action and self-control. If the police have their day, we have every day to fight against every and any form of authority and exploitation.

00.04.02

The Manifesto is unsigned, but Paulo reads it as though they were his own words. As long as he can use them to rail against authority, against the military, against the bourgeoisie, he will live by them until his dying day.

00.04.15

Interview with Paulo

Listen mate, this is my anarchist's garb. This stuff here, for example. If I had to wear a suit and tie one day - which I'll never do because I think a tie is symbolic of being hanged - but ok, if I became a top executive one day, you know, if I had to lead a normal life, I'd never get rid of this stuff.

00.04.40

Paulo has no desire for a normal life, like a growing number of people in the Western world. This is the story of those who drop out.

00.04.48

A common ethos brought these young people together. They moved in because they were homeless and they believe that squatting is a powerful social weapon.

00.04.57

Couple working

Paulo arrived here two years ago with a wife and a paralysing debt. He'd fallen behind with the mortgage. His stab at a normal life had gone wrong .

00.05.07

Interview with Paulo

We bought the house because we needed to, we were living in a spare room, we had permanent jobs like normal people do, but it didn't work out. The mortgage went up a lot, there were too many expenses, we had cats, we had a phone, we had to pay for water, electricity...  we earnt about £250 a month each and we just couldn't survive.

00.05.33

Steal from the rich

Paulo and Paula didn't say anything to anyone. They simply packed their things, abandoned the house and slipped away. And so they turned their backs on consumer society for good. It was their first and last attempt to live like other people.

00.05.49

Image of Paula coming out of the house

In this new house, electricity has been replaced by a candle, tap water comes from a friendly neighbour.

00.05.59

Paula opening the gate

I'm going next door.

00.06.03

Interview with Paula

Paula: They have been giving us water for three years, since people first moved in, It's because the first people that squatted here were friends of their son.  From then on they've given us water.

Interviewer: You come in here any time you want?

Paula: Yes, no problem, day or night, we just have to open the gate.

00.06.30

She makes this trip every day.  As many times as she has to. Paula prefers this daily routine to a job, the mortgage and the monthly bills.

00.06.43

She lives with Paulo in the "kitchen". In here they eat, sleep and relax. It may not be luxury but it's dreamy in comparison to most squats. Here at least there is gas so they can cook hot food.

00.07.00

But nothing is sqandered.  The spaghetti water doubles-up as washing-up water. Adaption is the key to survival for the modern tribesman. Yet brave hunting skills are not in the lifestyle description.

00.07.14

cooking spaghetti

Eduardo: come closer, are you afraid of the pan?

Joana: No, I am scared of burning myself.

00.07.23

Interview with Anarca (Eduardo) and Joana

Anarca :We took over this room two or three months ago

Joana: It still needs a lot of work.

Anarca:  This here also needs repairing.

Joana: There are rats all over the place.

Anarca:  This will be our store room, and we can also use the floorspace. We can use this as a store room with shelves. These windows will clean up nicely. It will look good.

00.07.48

Even without the building work done, Joana prefers sleeping on the floor to her family home. And for Eduardo it's a vast improvement to the park bench he was sleeping on, after a row with his mother.

00.08.01

Interview with Anarca

Anarca: My mother and I adore each other, but it didn't work out. She is a socialist I am an anarchist, she has a different way of seeing tidiness. For example...tiding the house, times to get up, times to go to bed, times to eat, how to manage money, how to dress, how to walk...we don't agree on any of these things. The only thing we agree on is love. A mother's love and a son's love for each other.

00.08.36

Eduardo hit independence in his teens. He's not ambitious. He labours on building sites when he needs a bit of cash. It keeps him happy.

00.08.45

Image of Joana plaiting hair

Joana became the black sheep when she introduced her family to Eduardo. She forgot about university and told her parents she didn't care for the vices of the bourgeoisie. Now, she plaits hair for a living. 

00.09.00

Interview with Joana

Joana: Eduardo taught me how to do it. I couldn't do it before. One summer we went to the Algarve and we were living off plaiting hair. But he'd get so smashed he couldn't work. It wasn't right because we were plaiting with another couple and they had to do all the work. So I had to learn fast to give them our share of the money.

00.09.19

At five pounds for each plait they make enough money to buy food. It's not much, but it's the essentials.

00.09.26

Interview with Anarca

My dream is to have a Tattoo studio during the winter, because I have always had a talent for drawing.  Joana says: draw, make up a portfolio, invest in a tattoo machine, open a little studio. That way we can live off the tattoos in the winter.

PAUSE

00.09.55

Tattoo

The primitive art of tattooing has conquered the spirit of the nineties. Paulo's friend Chico runs a tattoo studio and is proud to be alternative.

00.10.05

Interview with Chico

If you analyse your life and the life of other people who take tattoos or piercing seriously, you can see they've always lived differently... they're people who've always done alternative things and who don't give a shit about what other people think or don't think. I am sure that anyone that takes piercing and tattoos seriously doesn't give a shit about what other people think.

00.10.33

Francisco's parents thought he'd be better off finishing art school. But he  became a tattoo addict after the first prick. Two dimensional paper and canvas was swapped with the thrill of creating living art.

00.10.49

Interview with Chico

I am a bit crazy about mechanics, in fact I'm completely mad about it. This is a mechanical piece. It's got a few skulls in here, and for those who know about mechanics, there's a bit of a motorbike engine...here's the exhaust pipe... it goes all the way round, this is a reel, this is a sort of starting motor but mixed in everywhere are skulls. It's a kind of semi-mechanical being, a semi-something!

00.11.23

The finished tattoo will be days of work for Chico and many painful hours for Paulo. Yet the pain doesn't put him off. Through tattoos he defines himself as someone who doesn't live the 9-5.

00.11.37

Interview with Piranha

For me, this is a bit of a challenge, If I can't work in a place where I can be myself I have to make a choice. I have to choose something where I can be and work for what I am and not for the image I might give off. That is why I always choose the kind of work where I can be what I am and dress as I want, because I think that those things also have value.

00.12.02

But even anarchists have their own conventions...like playing in bands. Piranha's name hails from his days with the heavy metal combo ‘Chaotic Corrosion'. His job as a roadie was just right. Plenty of time for a social life and lots of like-minded people.

People like Renato.

00.12.33

Coming out of the house

Only the band could get Renato out of bed while it's still dawn. Today they're on tour so he's leaving home early. They're off to play at a massive student rave. Out in public, they toast the  unrespectable.

00.12.54

Renato drinking

Renato is the natural born leader of the band. The only one who lives by their lyrics. Four years ago he embraced the pacifist's cause and bolted from compulsory military service. His parent's were NOT impressed.

00.13.10

Interview with Renato

My mother chucked me out of the house, so I had to find a place to sleep, and as I already knew the guys I moved into the squat, I got a bedroom and I hope to stay there a while. It will be my home.

00.13.35

Playing the drums

He's now trying to live off his music so he got The Snob band together. It's hard core grunge. They've already made a name for themselves on the streets. Now it's time for the universities. Renato hopes he'll have more luck here as a style symbol than as a student.

00.13.55

Interview with Renato

Everyone leads their own life, I don't find anything interesting about this life, but people can do what they like. I still have a life without having studied, without any of these things.

00.14.07

Renato includes in the list of things he doesn't miss money. That's why he wasn't bothered when the concert was cancelled. He's used to surviving on the streets.

PAUSE

00.14.38

Snob busking badly. / people walking past Renato offering no money.

Busking plugs the holes in their  pockets. They play in their own personal style. But it's not everyone's cup of tea, they persist until they've earned enough money to get back to Lisbon.

00.14.58

Back at home they can practice for their next concert.

00.15.23

Playing hard grunge in a garage.

Abrasive lyrics over heavy drumming bemoan urban living and attack consumer society. "Bread baked by the Devil" is their latest track.

00.15.35

But sometimes the themes are more personal. Body-piercers hold strong views on some things that most of us wouldn't give a second thought. What popular culture calls beauty, they see as empty artifice.

00.15.51

Interview with Miguel

Why the hell do women shave their hair before going to the beach? It's just for their image. I feel good wearing these clothes, there's no way I can see myself wearing a suit and tie. The idea makes me ill, I feel good the way I dress so I‘ll carry on dressing like this for as long as I can. I have no idea how long that will be. I'm making the most of it now.

00.16.15

Miguel knows he may have to change one day. But for the moment it doesn't worry him. He can be who he wants... and right now he wants to learn Sociology, to understand social trends.

00.16.31

Interview with Miguel

My experience of political systems tells me that dictatorship does not work, that communism does not work, that democracy does not work. It tells me that capitalism, which is the system we have, is not democracy, because democracy is a bigger utopia than anarchism, but that does not work either. So, what can I believe in? What is called anarchy is impossible, but what I call an anarchival system is something different. I believe that people can look after each other, and that there is no need for materialism, that we don't have to put money ahead of personal interests. The day we open our eyes to the world and realize we can help each other instead of clambouring over each other to climb the ladder - now that would be the ideal world. I want to defend that. But how can we achieve it?

00.17.21

Miguel tried to create his utopia here in this abandoned farm. For 7 months they held workshops on drama, drawing and sculpture. He wanted to create a Centre for alternative culture. But the police wouldn't allow it. The only political weapon he has left is his music. He sings protest songs about motorways, petrol companies and multi-nationals. Macdonald's is his pet hate.

00.17. 46

Interview with Miguel

I can't defend these kind of ideals. They can already manipulate the vast majority of Portuguese teenagers. For them it's easier to go and eat a burger, and have a coke and some fries during school breaks. They go there and have no idea what they're eating, where the meat came from, or what happened to the forest to make the crap hamburger that will go bad in half an hour. If these teenagers knew about it they probably wouldn't go. But who am I to change other people's minds. The most I can do is to pinpoint what is wrong and if people are clever enough to see they are doing wrong, they will change. I can't force anyone to change. I can only be myself.

00.18.41

Pro-abortion demonstration

They're protesting for a woman's right to choose, but they could be shouting about any issue as long as it goes against the tide. When the Portuguese Parliament voted on the abortion bill, demonstrators gathered. They'd had their meetings and planned the action in one of Lisbon's squats.

00.19.05

Interview with Sofia

I attend demonstrations to express my ideas, because I don't wake up every day at 8 o'clock, I don't do the same things every day. That's why I live in this house, because I can be apart from the things I don't like, from the system of society, from the bad things in society, I don't live with them, I am in touch  with people that work, but I'm not a part of their day to day.

00.19.39

Sofia used to live an uncontroversial life helping out with her family's cafe. Life changed three years ago when she met Gonçalo and moved in to the squat. Here they hope to live a life of freedom, far away from the things that oppress them.

00.19.59

Interview with Gonçalo

The system..., the system, the borders , the armies, the police, the hypocrites in Parliament, the hypocrites that are in charge of TV... I don't know, so many things, oppression in general, authoritarianism in general because I think that life could be mellow, it could be...people being happy. I thought that I was doing well but now I can see that I was playing my parent's game. What I mean is that they made us feel as if we were abnormal ... in the end we reached the conclusion that we got had to get out, because I look at people, at the bourgeoisie, the little and the big, and their stuff is not that good.  They are slaves of everything they have, they can't abandon all of that. They either shoot themselves in the head or disappear, because they have to maintain all the shit that surrounds them, the little car, the house in the nice area, the clothes they wear, the perfume they wear, the places they show off, they have to feed all of it, all those vices.

00.21.29

The only vice Goncalo and Sofia now feed is ‘Linen the bitch' their dog.

00.21.37

It's a simple life. They juggle on the streets, sell craft work and try to learn new skills.

00.21.44

Interview with Sofia

I want to learn to do body piercing, so that there will be more pierced people. One of the reasons I plait hair is so that you don't just see  long, brown, black or grey hair in Portugal, so that we can have more colour.

PAUSE

00.22.17

Children staring

Look,  he has one in his tongue

00.22.22

Interview with Carolas

It is hard to go around like this in Lisbon. It is hard to be pierced like me, with yellow hair..... a few tattoos, it is really annoying. I don't take any notice of the people, but it really is annoying. You have to adopt a hard attitude so you can look through things, because it's not very nice to have everyone looking at you, talking about you, laughing at you and making jokes. It's not very nice.

00.22.57

Carolas has had longer to adapt to being an outsider. He started his alternative lifestyle as a punk and moved into the squat. After experimenting with his own body Carolas then became a body piercer.

00.23.11

Interview with Carolas

I moved in because I felt complicity, complicity with a certain type of ideals. Basically it was the anarchy, the equality, the animal rights, we were all vegans.

Inter: Vegans?

Carolas: Not to eat anything that comes from animals, or wear leather. That Is it basically.

00.23.31

But a year later he was back home with his parents and eating lots of meat - too much of an individualist to cope with the demands of communal life. But he didn't turn his back on body piercing.

00.23.43

Carolas on the phone

Is it a belly button piercing or an earing? Come round and we'll talk then.

PAUSE for body-piercing

00.24.33

His slick mix of anarchy and business acumen is going down well in Portugal.

00.24.41

Bica explaining how he wants his piercing

I was looking at it at home, you know, it has a little line, can you see? Do it on each side of the line.

00.24.52

In a conservative country, belly rings and ear piercing are the norm. Bica's nervousness is understandable.  He has his ears pierced, but that hardly compares to this.

00.25.09

Carolas talking to Bica

You are going to breath deeply and close your eyes. Are you ready?

Bica: yes

00.25.15

Carolas: keep on breathing.

00.25.19

It was more fear than anything else

Do you want another one?

Bica: yes.

00.25.30

Interview with Carolas:

It's not very useful. It's more the fun of having something new done. It gives the man more pleasure than the girls.

00.25.40

Bica had his scrotum pierced as a surprise for his girlfriend. But he'll have to keep it under wraps as it will take two months to heal.

00.25.47

Interview with Carolas:

Carolas: In principle, there is no risk with having a scrotum done, but Ampalangs and Prince Alberts are a bit more complicated.

Inter: why is that?

Carolas: Because of the bleeding, once you start you can't stop.

Int: what is a Prince Albert?

Carolas: it's what's goes in the Urethra and comes out underneath the gland.

00.26.15

Images of genital piercing

Carolas: there's the ampalang that goes through the gland, there's the horizontal pravda and the vertical pravda...

00.26.35

Piercing is only limited by imagination. That, and the courage to put up with the pain. But the reasons to go through it are more personal.

00.26.46

Interview with Carolas:

It hurts, it hurts to have a piercing done, but there are so many things that hurt! Ending a relationship also hurts a lot doesn't it. I don't see any masochism in this.

PAUSE for masochism

00.27.17

Those who choose to manipulate their bodies like this feel pain, pleasure and much more. Fakir Musafar became the guru of the world's piercers when he started demonstrating in public what he had been doing in private for many years.

00.27.53

Interview with Fakir

I found out at a very early stage in life that I seemed to be a little different from the other kids. I had this ability to trance out, and I didn't know it was an ability, I thought I was crazy. But it turns out that I was just functioning a little different than other people. And to live the kind of life they lived where I was raised, and to settle for those values, didn't feel right in my heart. I knew from a very early age that this was not right for me, so I decided that I was just to follow my heart and develop a kind of meaningful ritual or whatever it was that I needed to satisfy me, even If I had to do it in secret.

00.28.42

So for 30 years I did. I practised my body rituals, I use my body as a gift, I had a great problem you see, when I was 13 or 14 years old, everybody told me that my body didn't belong to me, it belongs to god, it belongs to my mother, it belongs to my father, it belongs to the church, it belongs to the state. I rejected that notion at a very early age. I said, no, this is not truth, truth is that my body belongs to me. So I can use my body anyway I see, as long as I don't interfere or hurt anybody else. And that became my principle and practice for years and years.

00.29.24

He married the founder of the San Francisco Sado-Masochist Arts and now travels the world divulging his experiences. For Fakir his nirvana is achieved every time he has a new piercing done. He describes the feeling as a beautiful trance like state that has brought a new dimension to his life over the years.

00.29.47

The ritual starts hours before he gets to the stage. And the needle is only the first of the trials. These volunteers are going to do the Dance of the Balls, an old Hindu tradition. The objective is freedom of the spirit.

00.30.20

Interview with Fakir

Well, I have done it a lot of times myself, I can speak for my own experiences and I brought this kind of ritual to hundreds and hundreds of people by now. First were just small groups of 5 or 6, and people found something in this that they couldn't get anywhere else in life. They find a kind of inner connection, a communication, each time they dance something like this, they go for aesthetic light, they get a different result. You just have to trust if you keep on doing this, you gonna get answers for a lot of questions, you gonna get a lot of stuff into your life that you may need at that time.

00.30.57

These arts are almost as old as humanity, unearthed by the urban tribes at the end of the millennium. Rodrigo looks into the fire for a  different meaning of life.

00.31.08

Interview with Rodrigo

Juggling calms me down. We accumulate a lot of energy in our daily lives, that is difficult to use up. Because it's the result of stress, it is accumulated tension  and energy and this is my way of using that energy, it makes me feel calmer, more relaxed. It lets me confront life.

00.31.34

Rodrigo says he was born to shock. His body has proved to be his most effective tool. He does body piercing, tattoos and earns a living juggling. A year ago he joined a group that aims to start a global  revolution.

00.31.49

Revolution through dance. Rave culture. Pulsating rhythms and hallucinogenic lights create both a party and a weapon against the system. This crew organises raves all over Europe.

00.32.04

Interview with Richard

 I don't like to be told you have your have your education, you learn, you train, you live here, you get married, you have a family, you have a mortgage, you do this, you do that. That doesn't mean that it isn't a good thing to do, is just not right to me as an individual.

00.32.23

The search for a different way includes experimenting with drugs. Tonight it's a ‘smart drink', a cocktail of fruit juices with natural stimulators. That plus some repetitive beats and an impressive light show should free the spirit.

00.32.40

But the British Parliament does not see things the same way. Two years ago, it passed a bill prohibiting open air raves. It didn't deter the DJs. They just left Britain and took their skills to Europe.

00.32.57

Interview with Richard

Europe is a big community, and we could say although we are not political, we are Europeans. We come from England and we travel to Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Chech, Bosnia, all over, Italy. People go all over the world and meet people with the same ideas, with the same minds. The travelling community is just a big community that travels to visit their friends.

00.33.36

Known as travellers, they're the nomads of the 20th century. Wherever they go, they squat in houses or on vacant land. Since January 1998, Portugal has been their home. The parties weren't banned here but they didn't escape police attention. After sustained pressure from the authorities many have moved on. Of the original group, all that remains is a few trucks and three people in prison.

00.34.03

Interview with Frank Cooper

The world is our place, the world is everybody's place, and people keep telling us this is private, that is private. But to us, we just need a place where we can live, as anyone else would live, we eat, we drink, we have children we watch television, we're doing nothing different from anybody else in the world, we just need a place to do it.

00.34.25

But the concept of private property is enshrined in Western law. Trying to live outside the system inevitably leads to clashes. Here in Spain police and squatters are embroiled in an intensifying war of attrition. Alarmed by the increasing numbers of squatters, the authorities are cracking down.

00.34.43

In Barcelona alone, there are over 70 buildings that have been taken over.

Interspersed with the squats are houses which have been turned into centres for alternative culture complete with bars and even libraries.

00.34.57

The scene in Lisbon is a bit more low-key. Here there are just two squats. This house is one of them.

00.35.08

There's never been much organised activity here. The closest thing to a library is Zé Pedro's bedroom. He's 24 and the only one in the house with any intellectual ambitions. For him the squat is a step-up. He had to leave school when the courts took him into care. He was told he couldn't study any more. After many years on the streets he had a drink problem. But now he wants to go back to school.

00.35.32

Interview with  Zé Pedro

Then I wanted to do a degree in veterinary science, but I'm not sure now, I have to find out if I've changed, make sure that it's not just stubbornness on my part. They might be right, maybe the alcohol abuse from childhood did affect me psychologically, but I don't think so. I'll take a degree, if not I'll get a truck driving  licence and I'll travel all over Europe.

00.35.59

Zé Pedro is happy with the move to the squat. It gives him stability. Before that he'd spent years sleeping rough. He liked the freedom but had too hassles with the police.

00.36.14

Interview with Zé Pedro

When they come over, it's the usual story, the routine visit and then they leave. We are fine, there's never been serious hassles, only when we got here. They raided in the morning and we were making fun of them asking if we could come over for lunch, it was Christmas day, so once in a while they like to surprise us and we appreciate it.

00.36.39

If the owner of this house hadn't disappeared, these squatters would certainly not feel so secure. Occasionally their luck has run out. They still remember the incident that put an end to another squat.

00.36.52

This is an expensive house. It has a fireplace, a conservatory and a luxurious swimming pool. But the standing of the house attracted attention quicker than usual. The police moved in to evict...and to search for evidence of drug dealing.

00.37.08

An alternative lifestyle brings with it the suspicion of heavy drug use. João was moved on from one squat and came to live here. He's been squatting the longest. For him the stereotype is over the top.

00.37.23

Interview with Marrocos (João)

Yeah, in the neighbourhood they say this is drug addicts house but as far as I am concerned it isn't.

Inter: Are there any rules?

João: yah, sort of, we don't have drugs here, but I don't know. Everyone has their own rules, I don't take them, if the others do it's up to them, it's their life. They certainly don't take them in front of everybody.

00.37.57

That's the only rule they all try to abide by. The house rules on washing are not so clear. Rejecting materialism and living in houses with no modern conveniences is a challenge to even the cleanest.

00.38.10

Interview with Marrocos

I sort myself out, I don't know about the others, some take their clothes home to be washed, others don't wash at all. I think Goncalo takes his clothes home . I pay £7 every two weeks to do the washing, or every three weeks it depends. For 5 Kg £7 is enough. To bath, I came to the beach, friends houses, sometimes my mother's.

00.38.40

Personal hygiene isn't an issue which bothers Antonio Miguel. He's not afraid to admit that he hasn't had a bath in 2 years.

00.38.53

Antonio Miguel drinking water

How can people like this?

00.38.56

Antonio Miguel started calling himself Sewer Rat the day he was thrown out on the streets. He says the drink was to blame. He now feeds his habit with the change he gets from watching cars.

00.39.10

Interview with Rat

Cigarettes, drink and drugs don't do you any good. That I can assure you. Well, I can smoke a joint, there's nothing wrong with a joint.

00.39.21

Sewer Rat arrived at the squat by chance. He didn't even dream such places existed. He lived on the street and that was where he intended to stay. Only one day he met some new friends.

00.39.35

Interview with Rat

I slept on the Rua Direita, on the pavement and there's a guy that lives here, we don't need to give names, I don't know how it was, he got paranoid, "Man, you're sleeping here with cardboard boxes when we have a nice pad". Then he invited me and I came.

00.40.06

Sewer rat is old enough to be their father. But he's the only one who's here more through necessity than conviction. He doesn't care if they defend anarchy, if they do body piercing and if they make a political statement out of squatting. He doesn't understand what it takes to live like this by choice. The answer is not simple, but those who have always been different know their own mind.

00.40.32

Interview with Fakir

Until recent times there was no need for me in this world, but about 1980, there were a lot of young people who were disenfranchised, not satisfied, something was missing. Life is fine, we have aeroplanes, we have refrigerators, telephones, we have a lot of stuff, but something is missing, something that society did not provide. No initiation, no rites of passage, how would a boy know he is growing up...not provided. So the young people, since the 80's , anyway,  have invented their own rituals, their own initiations, and they had some old guys like me come along and say "gee, here is a new way to do it" and show some thing and they picked up on it. that's what became the modern primitive movement. That is what it's all about.

00.41.32

For the modern primitives, body piercing and tattooing is today's initiation, a mark of spiritual independence in a modern world.

00.41.42

Interview with Nuno

I think that the Boomerangs is a group of people that is developing work related to the primitive tribes and at the same time to urban tribes. It means a mixture of the urbanism that we all are, we are all children of the city looking for other forms of life, but we adapt to it without abandoning our urbanity.

00.42.11

In a search for meaning in the 1990s they look to other cultures, and to the past. They paint each other and play home-made instruments. They call themselves Boomerang because they want to hit out with the music they make.

00.42.26

Interview with  Xutos

If we look at people nowadays, they have the tendency to be colder, to loose the contact with others, thanks to the society we live in. We understand ourselves, because if we live the way we live and if we deal with people the way we do then maybe in this context of primitive moderns we end up being a tribe through the union we have with each other. That's what we want to give other people, it's to make them understand that there are alternatives, there are ways of understanding life, we've found some that we'd like to share.

00.43.13

Interview with Miguel

Modern? Yes, I can't say I am a retrograde, I'm not. I'm primitive in some of my actions...maybe as far as piercing is concerned . If it is primitive and it existed for thousands of years, then , cool, I am a primitive.

PAUSE

00.43.42

Interview with Rodrigo

Man's tendency to have piercing and tattoos comes from pre-historic times doesn't it? It was something normal, natural.

00.44.08

Interview with Chico

It's skin . It won't come off. It's there. It's looking at a person and knowing that I did it myself. It's going to live with that person for the rest of his life.

PAUSE

00.44.37

Interview with Carolas

Yes, there's a tribal side to it. I don't know if primitive is the right word. Primitive people are usually seen as (Monkey sounds) and it's not like that.

ENDS 45 mins