Philadelphia Film Society

See something you'll never forget

Opera on Film: SIBYL + POLIA & BLASTEMA

Part of Opera Philadelphia’s Opera on Film series

SIBYL

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE | USA | 2020 | 10 MIN | NR | ENGLISH

South African artist William Kentridge has achieved a worldwide reputation with his powerful animation films, charcoal drawings, large-scale installations, and opera stage direction and designs. SYBIL is a 10-minute film conceived in 2020 as a companion piece to WORK IN PROGRESS, the only stage work conceived by the U.S. sculptor Alexander Calder for Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in 1968.

Cast: Nhlanhla Mahlangu, Kyle Shepherd

POLIA & BLASTEMA

E. ELIAS MERHIGE | USA | 2022 | 39 MIN | NR | ENGLISH

The first foray into opera for American film director E. Elias Merhige (SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE). This sci-fi opera film is a gnostic creation myth told through a visual tapestry which journeys into immensely desolate hellscapes of the inorganic as organic folding back onto itself in ever spiraling, fractally superimposing cataclysms of wormhole network (be)longing.

Cast: Nina McNeely, Jasmine Albuquerque, Micaela Tobin, Sharon Chohi Kim