Dante's Inferno

I've been doing some research on the The Divine Comedy... because at some point I decided to incorporate the setting of The Inferno into a screenplay I am writing ... called Dante the Sea Monkey (that involves Sea Monkeys). Um... I'll leave it there.

Anyway, I purchased a series of audio lectures, and I've been listening to them in my car driving around for the past few months. I've also been watching lots of moving picture adaptations and contemporary interpretations online (animated, live-action, historical docuemntary etc) while attempting to read different versions and footnotes of some of the translations of the original.

I wanted to write something about these two excellent contemporary works that I've come across:

1) Dante's Inferno the movie (http://dantefilm.com)

Although this came out in 2008, it was only today that I came across it. Dante's Inferno is an animated (in a sense) puppet film. Created by Sandow Birk Sean Meridith (and others). It's a puppet show, made out of drawings that are cut out and put in painted landscapes. From time to time there's a hand that comes in. One time, a human comes in. He plays the devil.

The film is in in the style of In Smog and Thunder: Historical works from The Great War of the Californias, which I own. So I was suprised I hadn't heard of this one.

2) The Ninth Circle short film (on youtube here)

I'm in awe of these folks who make no- and low-budget films that are exquisitely beautiful and extremely professional and polished. They describe The Ninth Circle as a ZERO budget film shot in 2 days. It seems the one in charge is a young man named F.C. Rabbath ( filmmaker/graphic designer/ photographer/engineer says facebook) out of Tallahassee, FL. If I still lived there I would go meet this amazing cinematographer, editor, producer, ... who makes tons of short films, some with very elaborate story lines that stick with you. Pretty neat that it's done with no/extremely low budget.

Check this stuff out:
http://www.vimeo.com/fcrabbath (on Vimeo)
http://www.youtube.com/fcrabbath (on YouTube)