Project Detail

The Nine Muses

Synopsis

Twenty years after his departure to the Trojan War, Odysseus still has not returned home. So his son, Telemachus sets off an epic journey in search of his lost father. So begins Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey - the narrative reference point for John Akomfrah's unusual and genre defying story about chance, fate and redemption.
 
Structured as an allegorical fable and loosely inspired by existential science fiction, The Nine Muses is a stylised, unusual and idiosyncratic retelling of the history of mass migration to post-war Britain through the suggestive lens of the Homeric epic.
 
Divided into nine overlapping musical chapters and mixing a vast array of archival material, The Nine Muses is a modern recasting of Homer's epic as a 'song cycle' about journeys, migration, memory and the power of elegy.

Details

Year
2010
Type of film
Features
Running time
92 mins
Director
John Akomfrah
Producer
Lina Gopaul, David Lawson
Editor
Miikka Leskinen
Screenwriter
John Akomfrah
Director of Photography
Dewald Aukema
Composer
Trevor Mathison
Principal cast
John Akomfrah, David Lawson, Trevor Mathison, John Barrymore (V.O.), Richard Burton (V.O.), Michael Sheen (V.O.), Heathcote Williams (V.O.)

Production Status

Production Company

Smoking Dog Films

26 Shacklewell Lane
London
E8 2EZ
UK
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7249 6644
Fax: + 44 (0)20 7249 6655

Sales Company

Cactus Three

440 Lafayette Street 6th fl.
New York
NY 10003
USA
Tel: 1 212 674 1400 ext 214

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