[Commlist] cfp: Shadowed screens. Dante's Inferno in cinema and audio-visual media

SHADOWED SCREENS. DANTE'S INFERNO IN CINEMA AND AUDIO-VISUAL MEDIA

International Conference

Organized by Silvio Alovisio, Giulia Carluccio, Stella Dagna

Turin, December 16-18 2021

 From the dawn of the 1900s to present day, the first Canto of Dante’s 
Comedy has been the subject of countless images and stories of film and 
audiovisual productions. Coherent to the vast and multiform iconographic 
tradition which has accompanied the diffusion of Dante’s work, for 
modern media cultures the Inferno represents not only a challenge to the 
limits of what can be represented (what first comes to mind is Salò o le 
120 giornate di Sodoma by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975, or Federico 
Fellini’s painful renouncement of his Dante project), but also a 
powerful creative space for western imagination to experiment, often 
during technological and aesthetic turning points, new expressive 
possibilities (L’inferno by F. Bertolini, A. Padovan and G. De 
Liguoro,1911; A TV Dante by P. Greenaway-T. Phillips, 1990 and R. Ruiz, 
1991; What Dreams May Come by V. Ward, 1998). The re-elaboration of 
Dante’s Inferno by the media seems to be a point of convergence where, 
through the re-elaboration of a centuries-old artistic and staging 
tradition, new hybridizations between attractional function and 
narrative function are experimented. At the same time, Dante’s poetry 
has proven to be an endless reserve of visionary images, recurring 
topos, poetic tropes, situations, characters and citations to 
re-situate, re-enacting, reinterpret (even through parody) in productive 
contexts or heterogeneous genres and with the most diverse choices of 
mise- en-scène.

While the Inferno produced by Milano Films in 1911 has remained a model 
of referral for the adaptations that claim to be, at least in intent, 
completely faithful stagings of Dante’s text (relatively few), 
mainstream production, on the other hand, has often reinterpreted the 
first Canto as moral tale (e.g. the two American Dante’s Inferno, the 
one directed by H. Otto in 1924 and the one directed by H. Lachman in 
1935; but even indirectly, Seven by D. Fincher, 1995) or as an 
authoritative cultural myth secularized by laughter (from Maciste and 
Totò, to T. Danielsson’s Mannen som slutade röka, 1972). The most 
experimental production, on the other hand, has proposed hallucinatory 
reinterpretations (The Dante Quartet by Stan Brakhage ,1987; La commedia 
di Amos Poe by A. Poe, 2010), while animation cinema has drawn many 
different inspirations from it (L’Enfer by J. Lenica, 1971; Dante’s 
Inferno: An Animated Epic by M. Disa et al., 2010 ; Dante’s Inferno by 
S. Meredith, 2007). Finally, television has taken cues from it to verify 
and rethink its own educational potential (A TV Dante episodes, A. 
Rajnai’s Pokol of 1974, the recordings of Dante readings by Vittorio 
Gassman, Vittorio Sermonti, Carmelo Bene and Roberto Benigni and the 
wealth of documentary production on the theme).

In the last decade, perhaps due to the upcoming anniversary of 
Alighieri’s death, the media seems to be even more swept up by the 
Comedy. Echoes of Dante, for example, reverberate in Hollywood 
blockbusters (first and foremost, Ron Howard’s Inferno, 2016), in 
television series (Hannibal by B. Fuller, 2013-2015), in ‘film d’auteur’ 
(The House That Jack Built by L. von Trier, 2018; Onirica- Fields of 
Dogs by L. Majewsky, 2013), in documentary production (L. Nero’s Il 
Mistero di Dante 2014; R. Loop’s Botticelli Inferno, 2016), to the Dante 
parodies published on the most popular video-streaming platforms.

This ongoing proliferation and regeneration of the media Infernos, a 
sign of a renewed popularity of the universe of the Comedy, as well as 
of a certain dispersiveness, brings up a few fundamental questions. Is 
Dantesque imagination capable of proposing itself as a “low-intensity” 
myth? And, if so, in what form and with what connection to history, to 
traditions of their own audiovisual representations and to the powerful 
iconographic tradition on the theme (pictorial, illustrative, theatrical)?

A wealth of literature exists on cinematographic and media works 
inspired by Inferno, though dedicated, above all, to the most famous 
names and authors, and only rarely committed to taking into 
consideration lesser-known cinematographic productions. There is still 
space for research in less-developed and unexamined areas of research, 
at least potentially, on new filmographic discoveries, unpublished 
documental research and other interpretive hypotheses.

The Conference Shadowed Screens proposes to tackle these questions and 
to put such potentiality to good use, opening up a space for exchange 
and opportunity to reflect on new research perspectives tied to the 
representation of the Comedy’s Inferno in the sphere of audiovisual 
media, by taking into consideration the very research proposals that 
emerge throughout 2021, the year dedicated to celebrations for the 
700^th  anniversary marking the year of the poet’s death.

We thus invite those scholars interested in these themes to send us 
their proposals.

Of particular interest are those proposals which emphasize 
interdisciplinary perspectives, unpublished documental sources, the 
analysis of less-researched or noncanonical films and audiovisual 
products, or those which were done in less-researched production 
contexts like Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. (provided that there be 
a direct and documented connection with the Dante’s first Canto).

The deadline for proposals (in Italian or in English), of a maximum 
length of 300 words, along with a short curriculum (max. 200 words) to 
be sent to the following e-mail addresses, is June 30, 2021: 
(schermi.oscuri /at/ unito.it) <mailto:(schermi.oscuri /at/ unito.it)>

Conference participants are required to pay a conference fee of EUR 
100,00, or EUR 70,00 for PhD, Graduate and Undergraduate Students of 
other Universities.

The results of the evaluation of the proposals will be communicated by 
July 15, 2021. The conference proceedings are expected to be published 
in 2022.


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