The Illiac Passion

Director: Gregory J. Markopoulos

1967 / 90min / 16mm

Markopoulos corralled together the underground’s haute monde—Taylor Mead, Gerard Malanga, Jack Smith, Gregory Battcock and, in the role of Poseidon, Andy Warhol—for his radical reinterpretation of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, in which the filmmaker can be heard on the soundtrack reciting Thoreau’s translation of the source text betwixt snatches of Bartók’s Cantata Profana. A rebel posing a direct challenge to Zeus’s absolute authority, Prometheus was a figure of fascination for Markopoulos, who saw in the outlaw Titan something of a kindred spirit. Hence his vainglorious description of The Illiac Passion: “Metamorphosis of the filmmaker. Passions of the filmmaker. Out of his breast the free flowing blood of the creation of a motion picture which depicts the passions of mankind and of everyman in general.”

Distributor: Gregory J. Markopoulos/p>

Part of Classical Cinema