Screenings index

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

dir. Guy Maddin / Canada 2001 / 73’

subtitles: Polish and English

retrospective: Guy Maddin Archangel, A Trip to the Orphanage, Berlin, Brand Upon the Brain!, Careful, Collage Party, Cowards Bend the Knee, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, Footsteps, Glorious, Hospital Fragments, It's a Wonderful Life, It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today, My Dad Is 100 Years Old, My Winnipeg, Nude Caboose, Odilon Redon or The Eye Like a Strange Baloon Mounts Towards Infinity, Odin's Shield Maiden, Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair, Sissy-Boy-Slap-Party, Sombra dolorosa, Spanky: To the Pier and Back, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, The Dead Father, The Heart of the World, The Saddest Music in the World, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Workbooks Section index

Cast

Zhang Wei-Qiang, Tara Birtwhistle, David Moroni, CindyMarie Small, Johnny Wright, Brent Neale

Film description

Maddin's encounter with the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, which had been an inspiration for F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror, 1922), W. Herzog (Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night, 1979) or F. F. Coppola (Dracula, 1992) turned out to be an extraordinary adventure.

Maddin decided to make a film adaptation of a the Royal Winnipeg Ballet performance. The classical choreography for Gustav Mahler's music was created by Mark Godden. Film critics were enchanted by the film: An elaborate, self-conscious but arresting take on the Dracula myth (Guardian), By the end, you'll wonder why all films aren't made this way (Time Out), A production that is as sexually charged as it is beautifully designed (Film Threat).

The role of Count Dracula was entrusted to Zhang Wei-Qiang, a beautiful dancer, whose Asian looks stress the xenophobic meaning of Stoker's novel. Dracula, as interpreted by Maddin, seems above all a story of a man's jealousy. This film speaks about a man's fear of an alien who would come and spoil a woman's blood, of a man he keeps comparing himself to, of a man he wants to expel from her thoughts and dreams. It also touches on the fear of otherness of women - especially of women's sexuality. Dracula is a personification of an object of jealousy which changes men into monsters.

Agata Rosochacka