This seminal video marks the beginning of the artistic collaboration between Andrea Mastrovito and Marco Marcassoli, as well as their first attempt at “non-stop-motion.”
"Drakula faithfully follows the extraordinary historical prologue from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Dracula (1992): this 6-minute video exactly replicates, shot for shot, Coppola’s editing, using the original film’s soundtrack to create a dazzling and grandiose atmosphere—even though, in the end, it features none of Hollywood’s special effects stars: just a plastic monkey operated by a clearly visible hand.
In short, it is the story of Draculea, a 15th-century Transylvanian prince (the plastic monkey) who fights his battle against the Turkish invaders to defend his homeland and the Christian Church.
At the end of a cruel and bloody struggle, the enemy is defeated and driven back. However, false news of his death (spread by the Turkish army) precedes him to his castle, where Elisabeta, his beloved wife (played here by a kamikaze doll), overcome by despair, throws herself into the river below, meeting a premature death. According to Christian law, her soul is damned for eternity, but Draculea, gazing at her poor body laid out in the manor’s chapel, rebels against the religious injustice that prevents him from being reunited with his love even after death.
Thus, after blaspheming God’s name, surrounded by screaming and terrified priests, Draculea draws his sword and strikes the Holy Cross: suddenly, a jet of blood gushes from the wound and floods the set, while the prince, overcome by rage and pain, drinks the blood of Christ, swearing eternal and accursed vengeance.
In Coppola’s film, only Mina’s love (Mina is conceived as a nineteenth-century reincarnation of Princess Elisabeth) will save Dracula from his damnation. In contrast, Marcassoli and Mastrovito’s film ends precisely at the moment when the future vampire drinks the blood gushing from the Cross: here there is no redemption; the damnation is eternal (and we will soon understand why).
Dracula is therefore the starting point, the true beginning from which this reflection on the relationship between cinema and its audience—between fiction and reality—springs: it is no coincidence that Mastrovito and Marcassoli chose this theme, since Dracula and the myths of cinema were born in the same years (1897 and 1895, respectively) and, as many film critics have recently observed, it seems that cinema has always been the rightful home of vampires.
“Dracula wasn’t born in Hollywood, but he arrived there with incredible speed,” as stated in one of David J. Skal’s essays on horror films. Films, like vampires, fear the light, which could destroy their images (note here the very interesting fact that in the first great vampire film, Murnau’s Nosferatu, the undead is destroyed by a double exposure of the film itself) and survive only in darkness (the darkness of movie theaters / coffins, of the night); both exist within that thin membrane separating fantasy from reality, since cinema is a fantasy that is too credible and plausible, while vampires (in movies, of course!) are a reality too incredible to be believed.
Furthermore, cinema is something dead (we must remember that film stock is made from petroleum, which in turn is a mixture of decomposed organic substances) that brings images to life in a dark theater, and it seems that the prehistory of cinema can be traced back to those “ghost shows,” a sort of nineteenth-century popular entertainment that amazed audiences with rudimentary special effects by bringing the dead back to life (often deceased relatives of some of the spectators). Thus, cinema transcends even death, like Dracula, who, at the end of this short film, cries out: “I will rise from my grave”: beyond our metaphor, Dracula not only marks the beginning of the fantastical tale of a nightmare that has fascinated humanity since the dawn of time, but, above all, explores the mechanisms that govern and shape our fascination with art and, in particular, with the art of cinema."
Excerpt from an essay by Mastrovito that accompanied the presentation of the work in 2003.