In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang
Writers: Thea von Harbou (screenplay), Thea von Harbou (novel)
Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel and Gustav Fröhlich
Woman in the Moon (German Frau im Mond) is a science fiction silent film that premiered October 15, 1929. It is often considered to be one of the first "serious" science fiction films. It was written and directed by Fritz Lang, based on the novel Die Frau im Mond (1928, translated as The Woman to the Moon in 1930) by his then-wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou. It was released in the USA as By Rocket to the Moon and in the UK as Woman in the Moon.
Big thanks to Kicks Extreme Radio for wrapping up this weeks show with Bloodlust (Phengophobia) from the just released remastered NOSFERATU soundtrack! Kicks is a weekly radio show on Radio Centraal in Antwerp, Belgium.
The idea of the radio show Kicks was born early 1989 when Radio Centraal expanded their broadcast schedule from 3 days each week to a whole week. Of course this expansion meant that they were looking for new shows to fill this on air time. Peggy and Bruno moved to Antwerp in 1988 and were already fans of this radio station and had been involved in other musical activities before, mostly as dj’s. So it was an obvious choice for them to express their love for all underground music by creating a weekly radio show. Since Peggy and Bruno get most of their kicks by searching for and listening to the diversity of underground music they decided this would be an excellent name for their quest. On a late Friday afternoon in May 1989 Kicks made it’s appearance on the airwaves in Antwerp. After a short while their time slot changed from 1 to 2 hours weekly. After a year it was impossible for Peggy and Bruno to combine this time slot on Friday with their daily activities so Kicks moved to Wednesday from 20:30h to 22:30h CET.
Because P. Emerson Williams can leave no idle idea alone, he created a soundtrack to "Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror", the silent masterpiece by F.W. Murnau. Dozens of folks have done the same, but we're proud to present this version.
The approach was inspired by the Dogme 95 manifesto. Now, using so much technology probably makes it anathema to its adherents, but Emerson's mode of working is never pure, but, Harmony Korinne fanatic that he be, he felt an affinity to the movement. Several obstructions were placed on the process. The first rule was only to use sounds he already had on his hard drive. This was easy, as what he had taking up space were the audio tracks from the Veil Of Thorns album he had just completed (Manifestation Objective). What you'll hear is 90% vocals with much less processing than it sounds like. Secondly, he gave himself a time limit of eight hours to create and sync the audio to the video file. "It actually took longer to render the movie than it took to write the music(k)", saith P. Emerson "which was fine, as I had lots of drawing I wanted to get done."
For those few of you who haven't seen countless versions of this film, here is part of the wikipedia entry:
This was the first film of the production company Prana-Film GmbH; it was also the last as they declared bankruptcy after Bram Stoker's estateâ€â€acting for his widow, Florence Stoker sued for copyright infringement (plagiarism) and won. The court ordered all existing prints of Nosferatu destroyed, but a number of copies of the film had already been distributed around the world. These prints were then copied over the years, resulting in Nosferatu gaining a reputation as one of the greatest movie adaptations of the vampire legend.
With the influence of producer and production designer, Albin Grau, the film established one of two main lines of vampire depiction in movies. The "Nosferatu-type" is a living corpse with rodent features (especially elongated fingernails and incisors), associated with rats and plague, and neither charming nor erotic but totally repugnant. The victims usually die and are not turned into vampires themselves. The more common other line is the "Dracula-type" (established by Bela Lugosi's version of Dracula and perpetuated by Christopher Lee), a charming aristocrat adept at seduction and turning his victims into new vampires.
