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Hollywood Inferno

15 July 2003

Hollywood Inferno | Part of the Images Festival 2003, Toronto

“Loosely based on Dante’s Inferno” as the teaser reads, we find a Virgil who is a scriptwriter and a Dante who is an 18 year old girl named Sandy, “which rhymes with candy”. At Easter in 1300, Dante found himself in a dark wood – 701 years later, Sandy finds herself a bored cashier in a candy store. The ending of this film is not for the weak stomached, as it is rather disturbing, (but then again, so is a web search on Indymedia for pictures from the war). The fact that this dual projection video does make the skin crawl is an achievement in itself, and I was completely enthralled with its postmodernist hall of mirrors. Much of the film’s dialogue is lifted from various sources (dialogue from films such as The Last Temptation of Christ, The Last Tango in Paris, George Lucas in conversation with Bill Moyers, and, my favorite, “various art dealers and collectors” from New York’s art scene) and the credit list serves as an indictment of our flash-and-glam culture, with teenagers who seem victimized by the failed dreams of the adults left to mutter on pretentiously. In the end, our culture is a hell as real as that which Dante depicted 700 years ago.