Inferno 1911

Music Box Theatre

3733 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL

Free live concert and screening   |   Info & Free Tickets

The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago in partnership with Chicago International Film Festival present a CineConcert featuring the groundbreaking 1911 silent film L’Inferno, with accompanied live by Stefano Maccagno (piano) and Furio Di Castri (double bass) on the mesmerizing musical score composed by Maestro Maccagno.

L'Inferno is a 1911 Italian silent film, loosely adapted from the first canticle of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The movie took over three years to make, and was the first full-length Italian feature film ever produced. L'Inferno's depictions of Hell closely followed those in the engravings of Gustave Doré for an edition of the Divine Comedy, which were familiar to an international audience. The movie production also employed several special effects, some of which were considered groundbreaking at the time, establishing the movie as a leader in innovation of cinematic techniques.

The concept of "musical accompaniment" for the film L’Inferno is a transverse musical process that fosters a timbric osmosis of a predominantly electronic track and live performances on double bass and piano. The designed absence of specific languages allows the musical selections and genres to be freely defined by the images themselves, the absolute protagonists of the project, creating an oftentimes surreal experience. The combination of electronic and live music transports the listener to atmospheres at times impalpable, as the timbric density undergoes rarefaction, and at times to “magmatic musical” situations, in which the full multiplicity of sounds coexist in an orchestral sum of timbric material. Free improvisation performed live on the double bass and piano defines the soundtrack, allowing the instruments to dialogue with one another in a purity of language that ranges from Jazz to classical-contemporary music.