LIVE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL EVENT

Two spooky silent films with live piano accompaniment from musician and UVic professor Bruce Vogt . 

October 30 4:00 & 7:00 tickets $10 for students or in advance by clicking the red button on this page! Or $15 general public at the door.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton | USA | 1921 | 21 min

Haunted house movies were nothing new in silent-film comedian Buster Keaton’s day, which already made the genre ripe for satire. The Haunted House is Keaton developing his Craft, especially when it comes to building a gag…The Haunted House is not one of Buster Keaton’s most famous shorts, and that is a shame because it’s a charming film with lots of visual treats.—Silver Screenings

NOSFERATU: NEW RESTORATION

F.W Murnau | Germany | 1922 | 94 min

Sunlight wasn’t always fatal to vampires. That idea first entered the public consciousness in Nosferatu…the illegally made, now widely beloved 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The German Expressionist landmark turns 100 this year. Due to a legal battle with Stoker’s estate…Nosferatu spent its early life on the brink of erasure. But its narrative and visual language have echoed through the decades.

Like so much of modern horror, Nosferatu is a film where darkness consumes, light liberates, and color — yes, color — foreshadows both hope and doom. It may come as a surprise to those familiar with Nosferatu that while it was captured in monochrome at the time, Murnau’s silent classic isn’t a black and white movie as we understand it today. In fact, color is one of its most significant narrative elements. Some surviving versions continue to be presented sans color, but a tinted French film print also outlived a legal order to have all known copies destroyed.

This restoration of the film is striking. Daylight is awash in vibrant yellow, with a more muted yellow for candlelight, almost brown. However, the most dramatically vital tint the film establishes is that of dawn, as a distinct hue of pink.—Polygon.com