Friedrich Hölderlin

Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time (40 years separate the various extracts that are going to be used, and what is to be filmed), blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature. (Arnaud Dommerc)

Eloi, a paunchy middle-aged man, finds Samuel, a young sad sack, about to kill himself by plunging into the sea. Eloi takes Samuel under his wing, giving him a hot meal and bringing him to a seedy night club to introduce him to Esperança, who is said to be the most beautiful sex worker in Lisbon—and is also Eloi’s daughter.

Uma Antígona destemida, recusando-se a permitir que o corpo de seu irmão assassinado Polinices seja devorado por abutres e cães, desafia o tirano Creonte ao enterrá-lo. Como punição, Creonte ordena que a filha rebelde de Édipo seja sepultada viva, para que não semeie a insurreição entre o povo.

Uma Antígona destemida, recusando-se a permitir que o corpo de seu irmão assassinado Polinices seja devorado por abutres e cães, desafia o tirano Creonte ao enterrá-lo. Como punição, Creonte ordena que a filha rebelde de Édipo seja sepultada viva, para que não semeie a insurreição entre o povo.

A companion piece to the earlier film ‘The Death of Empedocles’, 'Black Sin' is an adaptation of the third version of Friedrich Hölderlin’s play ‘Der Tod Des Empedokles’.

Film adaptation by Straub and Huillet of Hölderlin's 1798 tragedy on the symbolic death of Empedoclus, the legislator in Ancient Greece.