Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Divine Comédie, Simon Côté-Lapointe (2014)

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Purgatoire-Divine-Comedie-Simon-Cote-Lapointe-film

Divine Comédie is an experimental film released in 2014, featuring music and video imagery by Simon Côté-Lapointe. The artist himself describes the film as follows: “This adaptation of Dante Divine Comédie is a oniric musical trip without words, a thrilling experimental mix of animation, video art and imagination combining 2D and 3D animation, video art and puppetry as well as electronic, electroacoustic and acoustic music.”

The trailer and two versions of the film (both the full-length film and a shorter version) are available to watch on YouTube.

For more information on the film and its creators, see the website here.

Contributed by Simon Côté-Lapointe, Université de Montréal

Hypersunday, Inferno (2014)

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HYPERSUNDAY is the electronic music project of Héctor González and niet!  They arrived a year ago on the scene with one foot in the light and another in darkness, and with a lot of respect and love for music.  Commedia-Intro is the first album of a quartet inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Their second album, which will be ready in late 2014, is set in a Hell inspired by Dante. Very soon you will be able to travel through the entire map you can see below, finding a new Hypersunday track inside each Inferno’s circle. But at the moment, we invite you to visit the Circle II, corresponding to LUST, circle IV, about AVARICE and PRODIGALITY, circle V, LAZINESS and ANGER and the VESTIBULE. Click the places names and begin your trip!

 

Grimes’ “Go” Video

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grimes-go-video-blood-diamonds-dante-inferno On August 27, 2014, Grimes (Claire Boucher) released a music video for her single “Go” (feat. Blood Diamonds, aka Mike Tucker), providing the viewer with a glimpse into what Grimes perceives as Dante’s modern Hell. Though “abstract” in its composition, Grimes and her brother-turned-fellow-director strategically chose to set the video in various locations representing human carelessness and Hell on Earth. The video casts Grimes as the pilgrim and Blood Diamonds as Virgil, and begins with screenwriter David Hayter (X-Men, Watchmen) reading the opening verses of the poem: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

See Spin Magazine for Chris Martins’ post on the video, which he calls “a sci-fi homage to Dante’s Inferno.”

See the full video here.grimes-go-video-blood-diamonds-dante-inferno

Contributed by Ryan Alexander (George Mason University, 2016)

Clifford Anderson, Score for “The Divine Comedy” exhibit at the Harvard School of Design (2011)

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cliff“I created the musical score for four short films about The Divine Comedy, an exhibition at the Harvard Graduate School of Design featuring new works by acclaimed international artists Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Tomas Saraceno.

“Working with filmmaker Rob Meyer (who received an Honorable Mention at the Sundance Film Festival), I composed a musical accompaniment for videos of each of the three installations plus a curatorial overview.

“It was a wonderful experience collaborating with the filmmaker and The Divine Comedy team at the GSD. The exhibition website at thedivinecomedy.org contains the full videos and the official information. Below, I’ve included my personal thoughts on the individual works and my experiences composing for the films.”    –Clifford Anderson, Armor-Plated Dove Productions

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Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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