Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Divine Comédie, Simon Côté-Lapointe (2014)

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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

Christian Anthony, “And Everything In Between” (2006)

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“In his video short, Christian Anthony has appropriated film and television clips creating a collage of images and scenes describing the afterlife. These fragments, taken from the last several decades, emphasize the tension between the media-driven, pop culture representations of heaven, hell and purgatory and people’s personal perceptions of these concepts. Anthony’s portrait of the collective afterlife is at times comic, violent and wicked as it tosses up stereotypes, self-righteousness and fear.”    —San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art

Watch the video here.

“Inferno & Paradiso” a photojournalistic exhibit in South Africa (2001)

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“. . .World renowned artist/photographer Alfredo Jaar curated this show which is presented as a collaboration between the SANG, the BildMuseet in Umea, Sweden, and Riksutstallningar, the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions Organisation. His curatorial method was this: ‘I invited 18 photojournalists from around the world to contribute two images to the exhibition (inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy). For ‘Inferno’ I asked them to select the single image that was the most difficult to produce, the one that caused the most pain and anguish. And for ‘Paradiso’, the most joyful one, the one that has given them the most happiness in the world.’ ”
–Sue Williamson, Art Throb

Contributed by Charlie Russell (Bowdoin, ’08)

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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