Bram Stoker's Dracula

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Sadie Frost, Richard E. Grant
Runtime: 127’
Year of Production: 1992

Francis Ford Coppola “travels oceans of time” and magnificently translates the archetypal novel by Bram Stoker as a charming illustration of the anarchist, hence doomed, eternal love. Avoiding the grand guignol forms of former adaptations and maintaining the epistolary character of the book, he places Stoker’s name on the title and brings terror back to the base of the neo-romantic tragedy.

Coppola’s innovation offers an entirely different dimension to the myth. The invincible, aristocratic warrior, betrayed by the deceit of adversaries and outraged from grief, is inevitably transformed to a metaphysical beast that seeks blood as the elixir of life. Meanwhile Coppola dazzles through the bold iconography and the extraordinary costumes of Eiko Ishioka, seconds the gothic musical partitures by Wojciech Kilar, highlights the exquisite photography by Michael Ballhaus and aims at Oldman, Ryder, Hopkins and Frost as four indelible symbols of the imaginary. And one more thing, maybe more important. Through the frames he uses to move between shadow and light, he plays with myth and delusion, and on the occasion of an immortal monster he honors the most vampiric art of all: cinema. Panos Gkenas

30th anniversary screening, in collaboration with the Midnight Express - Introduction by Akis Kapranos and Panos Gkenas.