Trailer for Prometheus Triumphant, from Mad Monkey Productions

It’s been a while since we had a look at any modern silents – the examples on show at Pordenone last year rather set back the cause of the silent film for today, I thought.

But now we have Prometheus Triumphant, or, to give its full title, Prometheus Triumphant: A Fugue in the Key of Flesh. Reportedly two years in the making, this is a feature-length film shot silent (with intertitles) in German Expressionist mould, as you may judge from the trailer. It was made by Mad Monkey Productions, directed by Jim Towns and Mike McKown, and stars Josh Ebel and Kelly Lynn in a tale of a white-masked young man seeking to raise back to life the dead body of his lover. Mad Monkey’s YouTube section has a number of curious videos about the film’s production.

Much more than that, I cannot tell you, except to say that there’s a plot synopsis on Film Baby, that Cinema Epoch is selling it on DVD, that it runs 79mins, that it reportedly aims to be explicit about the sexuality that the German Expressionists left implicit, and that maybe the German Expressionists knew more of what they were doing than those who have come after them…