Double feature! One night only!
Thursday, October 12 | 7:30 pm
Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella’s 1971 “underground masterpiece,” Vampir – Cuadecuc, tells a compressed version of the Dracula story, drawn from behind-the-scenes footage that the filmmaker shot on the set of cult director Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula, starring Christopher Lee. Portabella filmed his near-silent experimental feature in high-contrast black-and-white, giving the film the degraded feel of its silent-era, Expressionist predecessors. The spirit of the singular Vampir – Cuadecuc is captured by the second word of its Catalan-language title, which translates as “worm’s tail,” and refers to the unexposed footage at the end of a film reel. Portabella’s feature is preceded by the equally mysterious and unfathomably beautiful Sarah Winchester: Ghost Opera, Bertrand Bonello’s (Nocturama) experimental fictionalization of a dance production that doesn’t exist. Focusing on Sarah Winchester, heiress to the firearm company fortune, who was driven to madness in nineteenth century America, Bonello’s 24-minute film offers more in its miniature duration than most films contain in four or five times its length.
Vampir – Cuadecuc
Director Pere Portabella | 1971 | Silent and in English | 66 minutes | NR | Blu-ray
Sarah Winchester: Ghost Opera
Director Bertrand Bonello | 2016 | In French with English subtitles | 24 minutes | NR | Blu-ray
