Dante Alighieri, the father of the Italian language, is beaming with pride in the afterlife because filmmaker Boris Acosta and artist Dino Di Durante authentically honored his magnum opus, The Divine Comedy literary masterpiece, with two documentaries and an animated film with two versions, English and Primitive Italian in Dante's own words, and a 72-piece art collection respectively.

While many artists of the past gave their visual interpretations (such as Salvador Dali and William Blake), only Florentine Renaissance painter Sandro Boticelli was accurate in his 1480’s depiction, according to Danteologists. Dino Di Durante’slife’s work, passion, and assistance from a committee of Dante experts helped guide his hand through his contemporary paintings, inspired to educate the world about Dante and his Divine Comedy. 

Boris' documentary feature film (Inferno by Dante) will screen at Cannes Film Festival in May, 2016 and Dino Di Durante's72-piece art collection has been published as a book on Amazon, currently #6 on Amazon’s Best Seller List in the Italian Literature section. The whole art collection is available in both paperback books and Kindle. Each painting comes with a description of the passage at the bottom of each page as well as QR Codes to be scanned to read the actual text for free online while enjoying the art itself. "Inferno - The Art Collection" as the book is titled, is already translated in 33 languages, with more to come.

I had the astonishing pleasure of seeing Dante’s Inferno as an Opera in Verona, studied Florentine history, and visited his home museum: Casa di Dante. For those unfamiliar with this legendary literary masterpiece, Dante wrote his Divine Comedywhile in exile from his beloved city of Florence between 1302 and 1321. However, in 2008 Boris petitioned Matteo Renzi, then Florence's mayor, now Italian Prime Minister, to get Dante Alighieri pardoned from exile. Mr. Renzi put the motion on the table and the vote was 8 to 2 in favor. Dante was forever pardoned leaving Florence's door wide open for his remains to be brought home from Ravenna, where they have been for almost 700 years.

Dante's Inferno is divided into 9 circles of torment, and Dino Di Durante excellently achieves this in his artworks. Obviously this is the abridged version, but lovers of Dante’s works will be delighted to feast their eyes on the original and accurate paintings by Dino Di Durante which took 8 years to complete. Further, seeing Boris Acosta’s Inferno by Dante brings this artwork to life with a long list of known celebrity voice-overs, narratives, sound and video effects.