"La Commedia" by Amos Poe

" La Commedia, the new film produced and directed by Amos Poe, one of the protagonists of the “No Wave Cinema” - the underground film movement based in New York, and father of the American Indie cinema, was concluded in time for the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

The film had its world premiere on Friday September 3rd, at Midnight in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema), Out of Competition. The readings of the verses by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri are by Roberto Benigni (Paradiso), Alfonso Santagata (Inferno), Sandro Lombardi (Purgatorio). Loretta Mugnai is the metaphorical Beatrice Portinari. Music by Debbie Harry, Decay of Angels, Hayley Moss, Peter Gordon, Muchael Duclos, Brenda Elthon, Paraphilia, Dave Mitchell, Riccardo Moretti, and Andres Nazrala. [...]

Amos Poe’s La Commedia is inspired by Dante Alighieri’s literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy and Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th century breakthrough The Horse in Motion, arguably the first “motion picture”. The key element of this film is the idea of a journey in motion, our life’s journey from hell, to purgatory to paradise - a pattern of events. Amos and Dante are two middle-aged “travellers” that have to confront themselves while undergoing a mid-life crisis. “Midway upon the journey of our life | I found myself within a forest dark...” so begins the Inferno. La Commedia is conceived as a cinema-verite document of Poe’s exile in Italy and France and especially Florence. It deals primarily with the perception of motion in a motion picture, whatever “narrative” we find is completely subjective. It’s composed of 20,000 animated still images divided into three cinematic sequences (100 minutes, like Dante’s 100 “canti”) that remind us of Dante Alighieri’s allegorical journey in search of Beatrice through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven - a kind of re-invention of the Commedia for the 21st Century, seven centuries after Alighieri’s revolutionary masterpiece. Poe carves a new “lingua vulgare” on the movie screen – a “dolce stil novo” of poetry.

The Directors said: “I was looking for a film to make and was looking for a good writer. Dante came to mind. La Commedia grew organically from my readings of The Divine Comedy, falling in love with a Florentine, my fascination with the roots of cinema as a movable poetic feast, and the help of thousands of fans on Facebook. My hope is that the viewer will be equally entertained by what is going on on the screen as by what’s happening in her or his head and heart. I believe that the magic of cinema lies in the interaction between the two narratives, the one that occurs in front of us and the one inside our soul”.

The film is an avant-garde production. While predicated on the prolific support of social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Kickstarter - thus pushing the envelope of filmmaking today – it was produced by its author, in collaboration with producers Elena Santamaria, Ben Bindra, JR Skola and Victoria Bousis. " [source]


* teaser trailer [You Tube]
* trailer [Official website of filmmaker/screenwriter Amos Poe]