Go to Hell! This progressive silhouette animation inspired by Dante’s Inferno will take you there. Peter King was a talented young sculptor who worked as an assistant to Henry Moore, and was inspired to turn his art towards animation by his association with Lotte Reiniger, as studio neighbour at the Abbey Art Centre, New Barnet. The film was made with a grant from the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund, with King also contributing the musique concrète soundtrack.

Peter King died at the age of just 29 in 1957, two years after this film was completed and plans for another film left unaccomplished. An earlier motorcycle accident had left him in poor physical and mental health, and his son has suggested that his choice of subject matter for this film was no coincidence. This film ends in the Wood of Suicides, and King would make an attempt to take his own life shortly after.