“L’Inferno” (1911) — live soundtrack

Semeli-Sofia Kostourou and Max Reubel accompany Francesco Bertolini’s film “L’Inferno” (1911, 70′) with a live sound performance.

🔷 The silent film “L’Inferno,” inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, is one of the first Italian feature-length films. Through impressively directed frames, symbolic images, and innovative effects, the film unfolds Dante’s journey through the Circles of Hell, guided by the poet Virgil, creating a dreamlike and nightmarish universe. The images balance between painting, theater, and vision, creating a visual composition that remains transcendent to this day. Using innovative cinematic techniques, “L’Inferno” is considered a milestone in the history of cinema—a work that moves between religious ecstasy, fantasy, and the origins of cinematic art.

🔷 Max Reubel (synthesizer, voice) and Semeli-Sofia Kostourou (cello) bring the film’s soundscape to life, combining original musical compositions with free improvisation. The meeting of their different musical backgrounds creates a union of expressive worlds, between structural clarity, intuition, and experimental expressiveness. The diverse sound sources and sound layers combine into a unified, dynamically changing sound environment, where image and sound interact.

🔷 Semeli-Sofia Kostourou is a cellist who studied at the Nuremberg Academy of Music. She works in the field of classical music, but explores the boundaries between classical practice and experimental sound forms. She collaborates with classical and contemporary music ensembles in Greece and Germany, participates in performances and recordings of musical works for theater and cinema, and performs as an onstage musician in theatrical productions.

🔷 Max Reubel is a visual and sound artist who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. His work focuses on the interaction and intersections between image, sound, and performance, exploring their relationship as a unified aesthetic experience. Using electroacoustic media and processed sound, he creates sound structures that move between experimental music and visual art.