Slideshow
DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY & GUY MADDIN RARITIES
Thursday, March 6
8:00
Selected by Guy Maddin for live accompaniment by The Flushing Remonstrance
This special program of films was personally selected by Guy Maddin for all-new scores composed and performed by The Flushing Remonstrance, NYC’s premier group devoted to live film accompaniment. His 2003 gothic silent film/ballet DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY is presented here along with rare shorts — Odin’s Shield Maiden and world premieres of Saint, Devil, Woman and Only Dream Things — all with live accompaniment.
DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY (2003)
Cult auteur Guy Maddin transforms the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s sensual version of Bram Stoker’s classic novel (Mark Godden, choreographer) into a ravishing, erotically charged black-and-white-and-red silent movie bursting with Gothic opulence, melodramatic cliffhangers, dark humor and stylized camerawork — set to the music of Gustav Mahler.
Saint, Devil, Woman [Séance] (2016) – World premiere!
In his Séances, Maddin directed his actors to channel the spirits of lost and silent films (here reimagining Frederick Sullivan’s 1916 drama Saint, Devil, and Woman), with the footage subsequently manipulated for ectoplasmic effect and spiritual turbulence, fractured into multiple versions with different colors, characters, plots, and intertitles, to represent the spirits of lost films dreaming new versions of their lives and afterlives.
Only Dream Things (2012) – World premiere!
Guy Maddin layers home movies from his youth with occult interludes of a recumbent and dreaming Charlotte Rampling, Ariane Labed’s mysterious imbibition, and vintage intertitles evoking the classical drama of antiquity. The lengthening shadows of Greek tragedy fall across his view of a suburban Winnipeg now lost in time, and a haunting, deeply personal journey through memory and the unconscious.
Odin’s Shield Maiden (2007)
In this mystical account of a tragic accident, the shield maiden of Gimli yearns for the drowned fisherman Mundi, aided by her acolytes in mourning.
Total run time: approx. 101 minutes
Reviews
“What an unearthly experience, these new scores! The flow! The darkness! The beauty!
A dreamy-dream-dream! SUBLIME!”
– Guy Maddin
On DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY:
“May be the finest film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel yet made. It’s hard to imagine how this lush, gorgeously expressionistic fantasia could possibly be improved.”
– Mike D’Angelo, Time Out (New York)
“Overtly erotic, willfully archaic, often inspired, uncannily affecting, and beautifully convulsive.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice
“Quick-witted and dazzling. Imagine Murnau’s NOSFERATU remade by Kenneth Anger, edited by Eisenstein on a cocaine binge, and produced for Masterpiece Theater.”
– Nathan Lee, New York Sun
“It’s sexy, brainy and slightly nuts…”
– Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times
“Poetic and erotic, creepy and melodramatic, overwrought and sometimes mocking, as if F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) had a long-lost musical version... So many films are more or less alike that it’s jolting to see a film that deals with a familiar story, but looks like no other.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
