Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Company to film Mark Godden's Royal Winnipeg Ballet production of Stoker's classic novel, Maddin has created an extraordinary poetic artifice, a neo-'silent' video movie that's theatrical, Expressionist and utterly cinematic. Quick-cut to the Mahler score, the camera conducts its own graceful, sensual dance of death and desire, resurrecting such archaic tropes as colour tints and the iris-out to stunning effect. With Zhang Wei-Qiang as Dracula, it announces itself as a 'troubled dream of Immigrants! Others from other lands!', and the push-pull of the exotic animates its aesthetic singularity. By the end, you'll wonder why all films aren't made this way.