About The Film

The ghost of a soldier from the Trojan war travels through the ruins of a haunted ancient world to confront the rise of tyrants.

Authoritarianism has risen across the globe, and with it the cruelty and gross self-interest that corrupts reason, truth, and the ability of diverse people to deliberate about the common good. What might civic responsibility look like in an ancient, pre-democratic time?

In The Iliad, for me, the character of Thersites — the soldier who publicly challenged the motives of Agamemnon, the Greek commander at Troy, models the act of ethical protest. For Homer, this protest is dismissed, because it doesn’t square with the bard’s heroic theme. But later in history, philosophers like Hegel, see Thersites as a character who speaks truth to power.

I’ve expanded on this latter interpretation of Thersites’ courage to protest the loss of truth and ethics today. In The Iliad the mob backs their oppressors when Odysseus beats Thersites to the ground, even though their own lives will be sacrificed to the greed of Agamemnon’s war. Today such men attempt to grind democracies to extinction, and if democracies fall, so does the struggle for a sustainable, humane world.

In my retelling Thersites knows he may not succeed in his confrontation with the demagogues, but by standing up and showing the danger they pose, he may achieve some instructive good.

(Today, November 6th, 2024. The arc of American history now bends away toward the abyss. But art and thought endure. Cruelty and tyranny do not last forever.)

Running time: 56 minutes

In Absent Now the Dead three elements combine: the traverse of ancient civilizations, Thersites’ first person account, and the sounds of the unseen world.

From a sound design perspective, these auditory ghosts open a path to the ancient world, and support the haunting voice of Thersites. Musically, the film utilizes ancient woodwinds, and the various double reed and double piped instruments – the ancient Greek auloi – float up from the past to accompany Thersites’ journey. These musical improvisations, based on ancient melodies and scales, are layered, combined, and constructed into motifs, with additional performances on flutes and triplepipe. Ancient fragments of vocal song, some in microtonal pitch, are sung. Excerpts from The Knights, by Aristophanes, echo in the background of the ancient theater of Miletus.

— Hamilton Sterling