DRAKULA HALÁLA

The original film, produced in Austria a year before the premiere of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's NOSFERATU, was lost during World War II. There is no doubt it would now be a valuable cinematic trophy. One of its screenwriters was Mihály Kertész, later known as Michael Curtiz, director of CASABLANCA and other classics of Hollywood’s golden era, who wrote it together with director Károly Lajthay. The Death of Dracula was created by film students at the Hungarian-language Sapientia University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Eight young directors reconstructed the silent original on 16 mm film using the surviving fragments and traces – creating the first Dracula film to be directed and produced in Transylvania.

The result is a story that is equally distant from Bram Stoker's film adaptations of Dracula and from the classics of German expressionism. Instead of literary and cinematic myths, THE DEATH OF DRACULA draws on the much more ancient folklore of Transylvania, brought to the screen through the expressive means of silent cinema and an original orchestral score. One of the most impressive scenes, the dance of Dracula's brides, unleashes a wild, primal energy - the main fuel that drives this film.

Text: Ksenia Reutova

Fri 07.11. I 20:30 I KAMMERBÜHNE I original version with English subtitles