(all images courtesy of Andrea Mastrovito and More Art)
Nearly one century later, Friedrich W. Murnau’s silent vampire movie Nosferatu continues to scare and inspire. Premiering this week, Andrea Mastrovito’s NYsferatu reimagines the 1922 film set in present-day New York City, whose monuments and landmarks are rendered into haunting, black-and-white rotoscope animations made from 35,000 drawings in collaboration with 12 artists.
Still from Andrea Mastrovito’s NYsferatu
While it’s been three years in the making, Mastrovito’s movie feels especially timely now. The revised storyline casts the vampire as an outsider, and follows the lives of immigrants, who must also battle with their image as social pariahs. Mastrovito based his visual narratives on his conversations with recent immigrants, casting New York City as a place where people seek freedom but also face threats. Each screening will be accompanied by a different musical accompaniment — sometimes by the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani and other times by contemporary improvisations.
NYsferatu will screen this Thursday, August 17, at the Queens Museum and at various venues throughout New York in the next few months, organized by More Art.
When: Thursday, August 17, 8:30pm
Where: Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows Corona Park (Corona, Queens)
More info here.
