Preceded by shorts: The Dante Quartet (Stan Brakhage, U.S., 1987). "This hand-painted work 6 years in-the-making (37 in the studying of The Divine Comedy) demonstrates the earthly conditions of 'Hell', 'Purgatory' (or Transition) and 'Heaven' (or 'existence is song', which is the closest I'd presume upon heaven from my experience) as well as the mainspring of/from 'Hell' (HELL SPIT FLEXION) in four parts which are inspired by the closed-eye or hypnogogic vision created by those emotional states..." (S.B.) (8 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm, From Canyon Cinema) Dante's Dream (David E. Simpson, U.S., 1990). David E. Simpson uses "modern imagery for an expressionistic reinterpretation of Dante's cosmology. The film's first half reveals a Purgatory of alienation and anticipation, where...incessant activity yields no progress....(Then) into the Inferno of the subconscious, an erotic fever-dream of water, fire, flesh, and animal instinct....(At) the heart of the inferno lies a frozen lake; but on the shores of this lake, in the cold light of day, sits a city stripped naked of the religious mythos of Paradise." (D.E.S.) (10 mins, Color, 16mm, From Canyon Cinema) Cants from Natural History Works (Gary Adkins, U.S., 1975). Using text from Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths, but with subtle alterations, Gary Adkins gives us "A Parable of the Endless Recurrence. A dream that deliberately attempts to exhaust its possibilities and borders on its own parody, the duplication of space and the memory of time. In the recognition of a caged leopard. An image of human thought. The apparent contradictions of illusion. Dante dying in Rochester (at Eastman Kodak?)." (G.A.) (14 mins, Color, 16mm, From the artist) ____________________________________ Chilean-born Raul Ruiz (The Golden Boat, Three Crowns of the Sailor) has seen hell and come back to report it. For his installment of A TV Dante (please see November 30 for the related Peter Greenaway program), Ruiz returns to Santiago, his home prior to Pinochet's coup, and stages the continuing cantos amidst the mundane goings-on of the city. As he has done in previous films, Ruiz plays the reality of the urban 'scape-its people and history-against carefully envisioned cinematic passages, creating a heightened disjunction between the political and the poetic. Santiago as a metaphorical hell summons a bounty of past and present social inequities, foregrounding the allegorical aspects of the Inferno. But Ruiz is also the consummate visual stylist. His imagined city has an uncanny sense of the familiar made unrecognizable through grotesque images. A nightmarish state embraces the film, intimating the proximity of horror, of a near and waiting abyss. Ruiz and Peter Greenaway will soon be joined by several other directors as A TV Dante, all thirty-four cantos, moves toward completion.-Steve Seid