Into the Video-Inferno: Vertical Television, Experimental Seriality and the Moving Collage in A TV Dante

This paper focuses on one of the most unique experiments in the history of television: A TV Dante, a fourteen-episode mini-series aired between 1990 and 1991, partly directed by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway, partly directed by Raoul Ruiz. We will analyse A TV Dante as an early attempt to explore the aesthetic potential of television seriality adopting an avant-garde approach towards a fundamental work of the Western canon. More specifically, we will compare Phillips-Greenaway and Ruiz’s approaches to the Inferno in order to highlight the formal, aesthetic and conceptual strategies that guide their respective works. Drawing on Phillips’ previous illustrations for the Inferno, the British duo creates an abstract video-otherworld through the use of collage and a rich visual symbology. On the other hand, Ruiz chooses a thoroughly contemporary re-reading of the cantica by setting the action in Santiago de Chile and moving between political commentary and surreal, hauntingly mysterious scenes.