Black Sin

History doubles back on itself like a noose in Straub-Huillet’s second version of The Death of Empedocles, based on Hölderlin’s third account of the Greek hero’s life. A philosopher, prophet, and priest whose advocacy of democracy led to banishment and crisis, Empedocles debates his disciple Pausanias on the powers of love and strife, while above shine the great Sicilian blue skies, and below lies the hardened, volcanic rock of Mt. Etna. Here, the eternal—both of nature and of man—lives in every frame.