Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Original Sin – The Seven Sins Short Film, dir. Amy Tinkham (2021)

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original_sin_short_film_poster“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.

Maurizio Guarini, live soundtrack for 1911 Inferno film (2017)

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“I started this live project in 2017. The director of the Italian Institute of Culture had the idea, and asked me if I wanted to do a live soundtrack with the occasion of the International Seminar on Critical Approaches to Dante organized by the University of Toronto. I saw this incredible movie from 1911—the first Italian feature film ever. and I took up the challenge.

“This first performance, that took place at the Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto), received a great audience response, so I decided to go ahead and do more shows.”   —Maurizio Guarini

Cities and Memory’s Inferno Soundscapes (2020)

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“To mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s masterpiece The Divine Comedy, more than 80 artists from all over the world have created his vision of Hell through sound – this is the Cities and Memory Inferno.”   —Cities & Memory website (posted November 23, 2020)


Listen also to Cities and Memory‘s soundtrack to Giuseppe de Liguoro’s 1911 film L’Inferno, available on YouTube:

Giuseppe de Liguoro, L’Inferno, 1911

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inferno-film-1911

“The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro’s imaginative silent version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of Gustave Doré. L’Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante 10 March 1911. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. Its success was not confined to Italy it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone.

“Tangerine Dream have composed the soundtrack based on their opera of Dante’s Inferno producing a soundtrack truly worthy of their position as one of the top film music composers in the world.”  —L’Inferno film promotional site

How to Cite

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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