Dante was considered vulgar (for using the vernacular language, but he also uses the word “merda” a few times) and porn movies are also considered vulgar, so one can draw a connection – and this is what our film tries to do. Moreover, I always remember what Hollis Frampton used to say: “A polymorphous camera has always turned, and will turn forever, its lenses focused upon all the appearances of the world. Before the invention of still photography, the frames of the infinite cinema were blank, black leader; then a few images began to appear upon the endless ribbon of film. Since the birth of the photographic cinema, all the frames are filled with images. There is nothing in the structural logic of the cinema filmstrip that precludes sequestering any single image. A still photograph is simply an isolated frame taken out of the infinite cinema.” So Dante also made cinema, and in the film strips of porn films’ trailers from the archive of Torino there are moments of wonderful cinema – but, even more, moments of poetry and of beauty.

Radu Jude