For many filmmakers, working in television represents one of the circles of hell. But for British director Peter Greenaway (A Zed and Two Noughts, The Draughtsman's Contract), TV is a chance to indulge the visual senses, using the graphic flexibility of video tools. A TV Dante, made for England's Channel Four and shown at the recent San Francisco International Film Festival, is a fiery tour through the Inferno. With Virgil as our guide (played by John Gielgud), we descend through the rings of Hell, each one a roaring tableau of flapping birds, groaning sinners and yapping she-wolves. A TV Dante sinfully depicts the penalty for an erring life, while grounding Dante's classic text in a melange of contemporary video techniques. Not to be outdone by Virgil, Greenaway insists on his own reasonable guidance, perhaps hedging against the sin of pictorial vanity. A gaggle of "experts" give their sound-bite-sized interpretations of the Inferno's complex meaning. The effect is visually playful and a sly jab at public broadcasting-as though every experience, no matter how unrepentant, has to be educational. It's as if Greenaway were telling us that television, itself, is a punishment for excess. Eight cantos are included in this presentation-only a glutton could finish the entire Divine Comedy. A TV Dante will be preceded by Ardele Lister's Hell, in which the netherworld is a great database tended by demonic bureaucrats. Punishment here is meted out as harsh servings of digital manipulation, both literally as negative information, and figuratively as graphical torture. --Steve Seid