Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
French singer-songwriter Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier (AKA Christine and the Queens) released their electropop EP La vita nuova on February 27, 2020. The album’s title makes explicit reference to Dante’s text La vita nuova. The album was accompanied by a short film featuring Christine and her relationship with a mysterious figure known as “The Faun”.
Watch the short film and listen to the EP here.
Read a review of the EP, posted on Pitchfork, here.
“Original Sin is a modern-day love story about a broken-hearted heroine and her journey through the seven sins and the quest towards the virtue of Hope. The music of the legendary global rock band INXS seamlessly accompanies the film, and ultimately, the young heroine finds true love while the world heals with her.
“The film is loosely based on and inspired by celebrated Italian writer Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and the spiritual journey through the Seven Sins of Purgatory — pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. The Original Sin short film reimagines Dante’s tale through the eyes of Jane, a 21st-century heroine isolated during the recent pandemic, who continues to search for love and the means to validate her soul.” [. . .] –UMe, Cision PR Newswire, June 28, 2021 (retrieved January 6, 2022)
Watch a trailer (which includes direct quotes from the first canto of Inferno) for Original Sin here.
Listen to the short film’s Dante-inspired soundtrack here.
“Wandering Star is a short film by filmmaker Sai Kelly. The short film begins with Dante’s opening lines from Inferno, Canto 1 but with a notable difference in that the words “our life” are replaced in the film with “my life.” The protagonist of the film, Dante, is clearly in distress and confused, much like the poet Dante when he appears in the dark wood. As Kelly’s Dante struggles with his confusion, a payphone nearby rings. On answering the payphone, we, along with the protagonist are introduced to a voice who later is called Virgil. Virgil shows the protagonist the most painful and darkest parts of the city where Dante lives. The people suffering “see no way out” mimicking the way in which there is no escape for the sinners of the Inferno. In the end, Dante faints, calls out to Virgil who tells him to run, and wakes up back on the streets of his city a changed person.” –Contributor Cameron Gunter
A full video of Wandering Star and more information about Sai Kelly can be found here.
Contributed by Cameron Gunter (University of Arkansas, ’22)
Cacciaguida is a 2019 short film by Davide Del Mare and produced by Lateral Film.
“Lo chiamavano così Vincenzo Casillo, perché nella Divina Commedia Cacciaguida è la figura che più di ogni altra evoca la purezza dei costumi antichi, con quella sua fusione di aspettative universali che si proiettano verso l’avvenire.
“Già a dieci anni gli somigliava molto: ovunque posasse il suo sguardo era l’immenso. Pinuccio, Masino e Cannelunga, i suoi amici di sempre, vi ritrovavano lo stesso sguardo indomito.
[. . .]
“Cacciaguida è uno spazio intimo, dove i valori più elementari eppure più indispensabili tornano ad essere legittimati: l’amicizia, il diritto alla scoperta, l’appartenenza, l’amore. Uno spazio dove non ci sono segreti, dove l’unica regola è l’autenticità.” — Marilù Ardillo, “«Cacciaguida» e la cura del sogno: La vita di Vincenzo Casillo diventa un film,” Vita (March 11, 2019)
See more about the short film, including the trailer, on Facebook and YouTube.
“Reading Dante’s Inferno today reminds us that hell has been built on earth. The machinery of war, like the descending circles of hell, trap people into a blind life followed by a blind death – all without meaning.
[. . .]
Dante’s Inferno was written as a warning and a spur to human beings – warning them not to fall prey to the empty promises of wealth and power, spurring them to contact the Divine Other in a life of spiritual reflection in order to find and follow what is good. In this tradition I show the images that are in the video. The hell on earth glimpsed here is the result of our collective indifference to the ambitious search for power and wealth that has been launched by a few in the name of society. I am referring to the so-called ‘global war on terror’. A part of every taxed purchase we make goes to its funding, rendering us complicit in its execution. Moreover, the theme of consumption is an integral part of Dante’s poem. Here I show the way that in the interests of providing food for all, our consumption habits have denied the lives of those animals we consume. The industrial production of food, furthermore, has not eradicated global hunger – rather it has created health epidemics like obesity (not to mention swine flu). Dante would be lost if he were transported to this cruel world: are we equally lost here?” –V Gimbel, Vimeo, December 11, 2009
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
