Nadja
(Director's Cut)
Screening on Film
Directed by Michael Almereyda.
With Elina Löwensohn, Martin Donovan, Peter Fonda.
US, 1994, 35mm, black & white, 92 min.
With Elina Löwensohn, Martin Donovan, Peter Fonda.
US, 1994, 35mm, black & white, 92 min.
Hailed by the Washington Post as a “brilliant fantasia on the Dracula legend,” Almereyda’s vampire story is set in the hip netherworld of contemporary lower Manhattan. Elina Löwensohn (of Hal Hartley’s Amateur) vamps in the role of Dracula’a world-weary daughter, who seeks a new life and new relationships as she spreads death (shades of the AIDS epidemic) throughout the East Village club scene. Shot in luxuriant black-and-white and punctuated with abstract videographic segments that enhance the overall hallucinatory timbre, the film is both a genre send-up and a serious romantic exploration of contemporary longing, risk-taking, and desperation.