North East Arts Touring celebrates 125 years of Dracula with nine days of Vampire themed films for this years Festival of Darkness
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NORTH East Arts Touring (NEAT) is celebrating Aberdeenshire's hand in creating the world's most famous vampire, with a host of vampire themed film listings for this year's Festival of Darkness.
This year marks 125 years since the creation of Bram Stoker's iconic vampire novel, Dracula.
The novel, published in 1897, was significantly inspired by the author's visit to Slains Castle. The Cruden Bay landmark fed Stoker’s imagination on his visit to north east Scotland, and the jagged rocks gave life to Dracula’s fatal bite.
To celebrate Aberdeenshire’s significant contribution in the creation of the famous vampire, NEAT will use their inaugural Festival of Darkness to tell one of the scariest stories ever written.
NEAT wanted to allow everyone the opportunity to celebrate this milestone, so film offerings will range from U to 18 - including children's films like The Little Vampire and plenty of horror flicks for grown ups.
The festival will be screening a diverse programme in traditional cinema venues, rural community venues, and also transforming Blair’s College, a category B listed former Catholic junior seminary for boys and young men, into a cinema for the weekend.
NEAT said: "Thank you to all of our volunteers, partners and funders for making this festival happen; it wouldn’t have been possible without you. We would like to express our gratitude to Dacre Stoker for his kind words and generosity."
"We welcome you to join us; if you dare! Bring your garlic and wooden stakes and help us celebrate this iconic fictional character."
Full listings below:
Interview with The Vampire (18)
Friday 21 October at 7:30pm - The Library, Blairs Seminary College
The undead are among us and livelier than ever when Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a talented group of young-bloods star in Interview with the Vampire, the spellbinding screen adaptation of Anne Rice’s best seller. Award-winning box office favourite Cruise stylishly plays the supremely evil and charismatic vampire Lestat. Pitt is Louis, lured by Lestat into the immortality of the damned, then tormented by an unalterable fact of vampire life: to survive, he must kill. One lifetime alone offers plenty of opportunities for the savage revelries of the night. Imagine what an eternity can bring. Hypnotically directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), Interview with the Vampire offers enough thrills, shocks, and fiendish fun to last a lifetime… and beyond.
Attendees are encouraged to wrap up warm, as Blairs Seminary College is an old building with no heating and to bring their own refreshments.
Nosferatu (PG)
Saturday 22 October at 7:30pm - The Study Hall, Blairs Seminary College
This stunning version of the German expressionist classic Nosferatu was originally successfully premiered to a sell-out audience at Glasgow Film Festival.
Now multi-instrumentalist David Allison is revisiting and - if you pardon the expression - ‘revamping’ his score using his more recent experience of live soundtracks for The Last of the Mohicans and Rob Roy which played at festivals including HippFest, Celtic Connections and Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Using live music, samples, sound effects, and ‘the voice’ of Emily Gerard as narrator (played by Anne Marie Watson), David Allison's version of Nosferatu is an entertaining, eerie, and original take on one of cinema's true classics.
Murnau's horror film, based on Bram Stoker's Dracula is set in Germany and Transylvania, but there's a good reason for David’s live soundtrack to have a distinctly Celtic twist and for a Scottish voice to lead us through the narrative. Back in 1888 Emily Gerard, a travel writer from Airdrie, was the first person to bring the word ‘nosferatu’ or ‘undead’ into Western European awareness when she wrote about Transylvanian superstitions in her essay ‘The Land Beyond The Forest.’
Stoker read Emily Gerard's account and subsequently wrote Dracula, the novel which has inspired a whole host of film directors, of which Murnau was one of the first and certainly the greatest. His Nosferatu remains the definitive horror film and its title is a direct result of the writings of Emily Gerard.
With the extraordinary 2007 print, lovingly restored by FW Murnau-Stiftung and Luciano Berriatúa, this is a unique chance to see the film in all its glory.
Attendees are encouraged to wrap up warm, as Blairs Seminary College is an old building with no heating and to bring their own refreshments.
Nelly Rapp - Monster Agent (PG)
Sunday 23 October at 4:00pm - Bennachie Leisure Centre, Insch
Nelly and her dog London are about to spend the autumn holidays with her uncle Hannibal. What she thought to be an ordinary autumn holiday turned out to be something extraordinary. Hannibal does not live the quiet life she thought – he is a monster agent! – the kind who has responsibility for keeping monsters and ghosts where they should be. She discovers a new world full of monsters, vampires and ghosts and embarks on an adventure where everything she once believed to be true is challenged.
In Swedish with English subtitles.
Lost Boys (15)
Friday 28 October at 8:00pm - Arc Cinema, Peterhead
Teenage brothers Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) move with their mother (Dianne Wiest) to a small town in northern California. While the younger Sam meets a pair of kindred spirits in geeky comic-book nerds Edward (Corey Feldman) and Alan (Jamison Newlander), the angst-ridden Michael soon falls for Star (Jami Gertz) — who turns out to be in thrall to David (Kiefer Sutherland), leader of a local gang of vampires. Sam and his new friends must save Michael and Star from the undead.
The Little Vampire (U)
Saturday 29 October at 1:00pm - Aden Country Park, Mintlaw
From the screenwriters of Chicken Run and The Addams Family, comes The Little Vampire: a fantastic adventure that you can really sink your teeth into! Tony (Jonathan Lipnicki) has just moved with his parents from a big bustling city in America, to a small village in a remote corner of Scotland and is finding it rather difficult being the new kid in town. One night, a lone bat flies through Tony’s window and transforms into a vampire boy called Rudolph. The two become best friends and Rudolph enlists Tony’s help to lift the curse of being a vampire. However, they must first scupper the dastardly plans of the evil vampire hunter, Rookery.
The price includes creative craft activities delivered by Aden Country Park.
Let Me In (15)
Saturday 29 October at 6:30pm - Aden Country Park, Mintlaw
A haunting and provocative thriller written and directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield), based on the best-selling Swedish novel (Let The Right One In). Chloë; Grace Moretz (Hit Girl in Kick-Ass) stars as Abby, a mysterious girl who moves next door to Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Road), a social outcast who is viciously bullied at school. In his loneliness, Owen forms a profound bond with Abby, but as a string of grisly murders grips his wintry New Mexico town, he begins to realise that Abby is anything but ‘the girl next door’.
The screening will be followed by ghost stories to chill your bones!
Dracula (PG)
Sunday 30 October at 3:30pm - Port Erroll Hall, Cruden Bay
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina’s health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina’s fiance, John Harker, and Dr Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.
Includes refreshments, post-screen talk and an exhibition of Dracula links to the North East.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (15)
Sunday 30 October at 5:45pm - Belmont Filmhouse, Aberdeen
In an Iranian ghost town, a lonely vampire stalks her prey. Her victims are Bad City’s most unsavoury men: those who mistakenly take as granted the submissiveness of a chador-cloaked woman like herself. But things suddenly change when she encounters Arash, a cat-loving hipster whose respect for the codes of honour between men and women throws her killer instincts off-balance.
Shot through striking black-and-white cinematography, Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature expertly fuses disparate elements of horror, film noir and Westerns. It also features an extraordinary soundtrack, with music ranging from ’80s New Wave to the Middle Eastern fusion beats of Bei Ru and the underground Iranian rock of Radio Tehran and Kiosk.
Tickets for each of the film festival events are available on the NEAT website.
