Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 635: 01.12.23 🇨🇦 𝙿𝙰𝚁𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙳𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝙵𝙾𝙲𝚄𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝙶𝚄𝚈 𝙼𝙰𝙳𝙳𝙸𝙽 🇨🇦 There's some things I've learned in life, like I'm never gonna be a "ballet guy" — that's just not in the cards for me. So this, Maddin's first real foray into the world of truly "silent movies" (albeit with that Maddinian flare), a silent picture based on a performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet adapting Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was, on paper, always gonna be a fairly hard sell for me. But here is where the genius of Guy Maddin kicks in: of course it isn't. It's totally delightful, engaging and fun. The choice of having an Asian Dracula represent the inherent xenophobia in the story is both extremely potent commentary and also obnoxiously on the nose. This is the paradox where Guy Maddin likes to live in. His process seems simultaneously archaic and new, as much as it does asinine and overwhelmingly compelling. Just a fascinating creator working on a wavelength all to its own.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 635A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 636 ⫸

---

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a 2002 horror film directed by Guy Maddin, budgeted at $1.7 million and produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a dance film documenting a performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet adapting Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Maddin elected to shoot the dance film in a fashion uncommon for such films, through close-ups and using jump cuts. Maddin also stayed close to the source material of Stoker's novel, emphasizing the xenophobia in the reactions of the main characters to Dracula (played by Zhang Wei-Qiang in Maddin's film). It was released on May 16, 2002.