This post will launch our Cinema Purgatorio feature, wherein each Wednesday we’ll share one or more finds from the Internet’s rich trove of cinematic fascination. Whatever else may be true of the current state of our digital media-driven way of life — which flirts in so many ways with dystopian disaster — it’s a golden age of creativity for short films and visual media projects.
For this inaugural entry, we call your attention to “Metamorphosis,” an exquisite short film retelling the Venetian Renaissance master Titian’s series of paintings by the same name. It was produced by writer-director duo Luke White and Remi Weekes, who work together under the name “Tell No One.” They completed the project in association with the new exhibition “Metamorphosis: Titian 2012” from The National Gallery, London, which “brings together a group of specially commissioned works responding to three of Titian’s paintings — Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon and the recently acquired Diana and Callisto — which depict stories from Ovid’s epic poem ‘Metamorphoses. ‘”
In the story of Diana and Actaeon, the latter is out hunting one day when he accidentally happens upon the secret bathing place of Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. In her outrage she exacts a revenge that only a god or goddess could conceive and carry out.
The film, in our opinion, is pure myth.