Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002)

Director:

Guy Maddin

Writers:

Bram Stoker (novel)
Mark Godden (ballet Dracula)

Release Date:

12 December 2003 (UK)

Genre:

Horror | Musical

Plot:

A ballet rendition of Bram Stoker's gothic novel DRACULA, presented in a style reminiscent of the silent...

Plot Keywords:

Gothic | Ballet | Dracula | Dance | Fiancee

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Wei-Qiang Zhang	...	Dracula (as Zhang Wei-Qiang)
Tara Birtwhistle	...	Lucy Westernra
David Moroni	...	Dr. Van Helsing
CindyMarie Small	...	Mina
Johnny A. Wright	...	Jonathon Harker (as Johnny Wright)
Stephane Leonard	...	Arthur Holmwood
Matthew Johnson	...	Jack Seward
Keir Knight	...	Quincy Morris
Brent Neale	...	Renfield
Stephanie Ballard	...	Mrs. Westernra
Sarah Murphy-Dyson	...	Vampiress / Nun / Maid
Carrie Broda	...	Maid / Nun
Gail Stefanek	...	Maid / Vampiress
Janet Sartore	...	Maid / Nun
Jennifer Welsman	...	Gargoyle / Nun
Emily Grizzell	...	Gargoyle / Nun
Chalnessa Eames	...	Gargoyle / Nun
Vanessa Lawson	...	Gargoyle / Nun
Michelle Lack	...	Nun
Kerrie Souster	...	Vampiress

Directed by
Guy Maddin

Writing credits
Bram Stoker		(novel "Dracula")
Mark Godden		(ballet Dracula)

Produced by
Danishka Esterhazy	....	associate producer
Lesley Oswald	....	co-producer
Lesley Oswald	....	line producer
Robert Sherrin	....	executive producer: CBC Television Arts Programming
Vonnie von Helmolt	....	producer (as Vonnie Von Helmolt)

Cinematography by
Paul Suderman		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
deco dawson

Production Design by
Deanne Rohde

Art Direction by
Deanne Rohde

Set Decoration by
Ricardo Alms

Costume Design by
Paul Daigle

Makeup Department
Lori Caputi	....	key hair stylist
Amanda Kuryk	....	key makeup artist
Doug Morrow	....	key special makeup effects
Jennifer Machnee	....	first assistant prosthetic makeup artist (uncredited)

Production Management
Lesley Oswald	....	production manager
Carol Wenaus	....	post-production supervisor

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Wanda Bretecher	....	second assistant director
Cary Davies	....	third assistant director
Elizabeth Jarvis	....	first assistant director (as Liz Jarvis)

Art Department
Robert S.B. Adey	....	assistant carpenter
Andrew Beck	....	key scenic artist
Boris Danyliuk	....	assistant carpenter
Jacqueline Easton	....	property assistant
Mary Esther Griffiths	....	key scenic painter (as Mary Esther Griffith)
Kim Hamin	....	property master
Jim Hogan	....	assistant lead carpenter (as James Hogan)
Steve Jansen	....	head carpenter
Tim Jansen	....	construction coordinator
Welland Jennings	....	scenic carpenter
Sharon Johnson	....	key scenic artist
Debbie Kuzina	....	sets buyer
Michael Larocque	....	painter
Brent Poole	....	carpenter
Vaike Ruus	....	scenic specialist
Robert Schultz	....	carpenter
Burkhard Weiss	....	key greens
Ricardo Alms	....	scenic fabricator (uncredited)

Sound Department
Russ Dyck	....	playback operator
Russ Dyck	....	sound effects editor
Bruce Little	....	sound mixer: Midcanada Production Services Inc.
Anita Lubosch	....	playback operator
Tony Wytinck	....	online mixer: Midcanada Production Services Inc.

Special Effects by
Tim Harding	....	first assistant special effects
Ken Hart Swain	....	special effects coordinator
Vaike Ruus	....	model builder: Dracula's castle (uncredited)

Visual Effects by
Brad Hoplock	....	CGI art director: Midcanada Production Services Inc.
Alan Pakarnyk	....	CGI artist: Midcanada Production Services Inc.
Alisa Prokopchuck	....	CGI artist: Midcanada Production Services Inc.
Andrew Shire	....	CGI artist: Midcanada Production Services Inc.

Camera and Electrical Department
Dominique Balcaen	....	best boy grip
Tony Bear Ruksys	....	dolly grip (as Tony-Bear Ruksys)
Tony Bear Ruksys	....	key grip (as Tony-Bear Ruksys)
John Clarke	....	electrician
Bruce Claydon	....	grip
Jamie Dawsett	....	camera trainee
deco dawson	....	photographer: Super 8 and Bolex
Michael Drabot	....	gaffer
Marc Gagnon	....	electrician
Christopher M. Gower	....	grip (as Christopher Gower)
Andrea Hardy	....	second assistant camera
Jason Heke	....	camera trainee
Guy Maddin	....	photographer: Super 8 and Bolex
Paul McWhinney	....	grip
Bruce Monk	....	still photographer
Len Peterson	....	first assistant camera
Rob Rowan	....	best boy (as Rob A. Rowan)
Paul Suderman	....	camera operator
Mike Turesky	....	grip trainee
Keith Eidse	....	assistant camera (uncredited)

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Anne Armit	....	head of wardrobe
Brenda Belmonte	....	wardrobe assistant

Editorial Department
Andrew Shire	....	on-line editor: Midcanada Production Services Inc.

Music Department
Bob Stewart	....	music editor

Other crew
Julie Anderson	....	first assistant accountant
Megan Basaraba	....	office production assistant
David Bergman	....	caterer
Geoff Bottomley	....	consultant: laboratory processing (as Jeff Bottomley)
Andrew Willem Boyles	....	executive director: Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Jason Campbell	....	production assistant
Shane Clements	....	production assistant
Sarah Jane Cundell	....	location assistant
Sarah Jane Cundell	....	set production assistant
Denys Curle	....	key craft service
Boris Danyliuk	....	first aid
deco dawson	....	associate director
Adeline Elias	....	production accountant
Claude Forest	....	insurance: Multimedia RCIB
Janice Gibson	....	assistant to choreographer
Penny Handford	....	set supervisor
Jolyn Hoogstraten	....	post-production accountant
Andre Lewis	....	artistic director: Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Gilles Marchildon	....	publicist
Tamara Mauthe	....	production coordinator
Catherine McKeehan	....	executive director: Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Bruce Monk	....	ballet master
Paul Popeski	....	legal affairs
Jody Shapiro	....	consultant: laboratory processing
Bob Sochasky	....	executive director: Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Mark Dinicola	....	film recordist (uncredited)

Thanks
Diane Boehme	....	special thanks
Geoff Bottomley	....	special thanks (as Jeff Bottomley)
Clare Cullen	....	special thanks: National Bank of Canada
Paul Dargle	....	special thanks
Terry Gallagher	....	special thanks
Anastasia Geras	....	special thanks (as Tasia Geras)
Ginette Hamel	....	special thanks
Erin Hershberg	....	special thanks
Douglas Holliston	....	special thanks: MPB
Louis Major	....	special thanks
Laura Michalchyshyn	....	special thanks
Bruce Monk	....	special thanks
Deborah Patz	....	special thanks
Joan Schafer	....	special thanks: MPB
Jody Shapiro	....	special thanks
Carole Vivier	....	special thanks

Production Companies

• Vonnie Von Helmolt Film
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) (in association with)
• Dracula Productions Inc.
• Royal Winnipeg Ballet

Distributors

• Domino Film & Television International (2003) (Canada) (theatrical)
• E.D. Distribution
• Palisades Tartan (2009) (UK) (all media)
• Zeitgeist Films (2003) (USA)

Other Companies

• Bravo! Television  developed in association with (as Bravo, a Division of CHUM Limited)
• CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund  funding
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)  developed in association with
• Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit (CPTC)  funding
• Canadian Television Fund  funding
• Clairmont Camera  camera equipment provided by
• David Bergman Special Events Inc.  catering
• Doowah Design  graphics: Dracula
• Kodak Canada  film stock supplied by
• Manitoba Film & Sound  funding
• Manitoba Film and Video Tax Credit Program  funding (as Manitoba Film and Video Production Tax Credit Program)
• Midcanada Video  computer animation (as Midcanada Production Services Inc.)
• Midcanada Video  video post-production (as Midcanada Production Services Inc.)
• Motion Picture Bond Company, The  completion guarantee
• Naxos of America/BBC Opus  Mahler excerpts courtesy of (as Naxos of America)
• Special Events Inc.  catering

Runtime:

73 min

Country:

Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

UK:12A

Filming Locations:

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Company:

Vonnie Von Helmolt Film

Surprisingly traditional, but worth a watch for horror and silent film fans

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a silent version of author Bram Stoker's Dracula that also incorporates many ballet-oriented scenes.

My two principle reactions to the film were surprise and delight. I was surprised that the film is so traditional--the silent footage often looks like one is simply watching a film from the 1910s or 1920s. This is heightened by the score, which is extremely conservative, traditional classical music. This surprised me because the Sundance Channel promos for the film kept repeating, ". . . from avant-garde director Guy Maddin". There is not much avant-garde about this film, either in the literal translation of that phrase, as "new wave", or in the more popular sense of "experimental/uncompromisingly different and unusual". Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is decidedly old wave, and never more experimental, different or unusual than a couple small production design touches that might have been gleaned by anyone who is a big fan of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983).

Even citing those two influences might be misleading. The Brazil influence is primarily present in a single device--Mrs. Westerna's (Stephanie Ballard) ventilator, and the Rumble Fish influence primarily in the recurrence of red (and occasionally green and gold) within the context of mostly black and white photography (with occasional, very traditional silent film tinting for various scenes). But Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is so traditional that Maddin frequently even went for German expressionist influenced set design. The sets are wonderful at that, however, and occasional they're more surreal.

It's not that the film is bad for being so traditional, but it took me awhile to adjust my preconceptions, which were misled from the Sundance promo. However, the silent film aspect didn't exactly work well for me, either, and the ballet was a bit blase when it was present, which was less often than I expected. Most of the time I was wondering what the motivation was for the silent film aspect, aside from an exercise in nostalgia and/or cribbing a style of a bygone era, like trying to create a painting that looks almost exactly like Titian, say. On the other hand, it was effective in a couple instances, such as one decapitation-by-shovel (shot from an angle that allowed for minimal gore, to my dismay), where Maddin introduced foley "sound effects" that amped up the impact of the scene. The instances of bright red in the cinematography were also very effective, and not dissimilar to M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), which postdates this film by 2 years.

My delight reaction arose when I realized that much of Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary can be read as an anti-immigration parable. This help explains why Dracula is Chinese here, rather than East European. Under this interpretation, the immigrant Others are invading white Anglo-Saxon shores, usurping authority, "stealing" women and economic power, and so on. It's also notable that Maddin's means of dispatching Dracula in the film is very similar to punishments meted out by Dracula's real-life basis, Vlad Tepes, aka "Vlad the Impaler" (and aka "Dracula" by the way). One popular theory has it that Vlad the Impaler's motivation for his atrocities was primarily to protect the integrity of his Wallachian burg, against what he saw as foreign political and cultural invaders. This makes Dracula's finale in the film fittingly ironic in light of the anti-immigration subtext.

Maddin's film is also interesting for presenting the story in two halves, the first solely centered on Lucy Westerna (Tara Birtwhistle), and the second on Jonathan Harker (Johnny Wright) and Mina (Cindy Marie Small). A pervert rendition of Dr. Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) was also unusual and amusing, but Renfield (Brent Neale) was mostly wasted.

Of course a potential audience for Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary has to be amenable to silent films, and not averse to ballet or traditional classical music. If you fit that bill and you have a taste for horror or an interest in Dracula, this film may be just up your alley.