NYsferatu: Symphony Of A Century
Public Art
NYsferatu: Symphony Of A Century
More Art collaborated with Brooklyn-based Italian-born artist Andrea Mastrovito to create NYsferatu, a hand-drawn, frame-by-frame retelling of W.F. Murnau’s Nosferatu. The film was adapted to include testimony by recent immigrants reflecting on their respective communities’ experience of overcoming xenophobia, economics, and racism to make their home in a new city. The film made visual and narrative references to current events, from the Syrian Civil War to New York City’s housing crisis, and featured an original score by Simone Giuliani, performed live at public screenings.
When
2017
Where
Turning Point Brooklyn and Queens Museum.
Events
August 14—October 31, 2017
Free film screenings in parks and venues across New York City.
2017-2018
International and national screenings at various venues
NYsferatu screening at Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2017. With live Musical improvisation by The Michael Leonhart Orchestra.
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About the artist
NYsferatu screening with live music at Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2017.
More Art collaborated with Brooklyn-based Italian-born artist Andrea Mastrovito to create NYsferatu, an ambitious public art project that combines film, music, and community engagement to create a powerful and poignant statement about immigrant rights in today’s world. Taking the first step in this lengthy process, Mastrovito and a team of artists, hand animated Friedrich W. Murnau’s seminal 1922 film Nosferatu, itself an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story, Dracula.
Using the technique of rotoscoping, each character, gesture, and expression was redrawn in the original film’s classic style while the background of contemporary New York City brings the film to the current moment. Each recreated background was drawn 3 times in order to replicate the beautifully eerie flickering shutter effect of early cinema. In all, the artist made over 35,000 original drawings to create this feature length hand-animated film.
With key organizational partners, More Art and Mastrovito arranged hands-on workshops in which English as Second Language Learners discussed the film and its implications. The workshops culminated with participants rewriting the silent film’s title cards—in many languages including Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and English—to reflect their respective community’s experience of overcoming obstacles of xenophobia, economics, and racism to make their home in a new city. In so doing the participants changed the very meaning of the film as well as its ending.
In the Summer of 2017, More Art presented a series of free film screenings in parks and venues across New York City accompanied by a live, original score commissioned specifically for NYsferatu performed by both local and international musicians.
Please visit the project website.
Download the press release here.
Andrea Mastrovito
Andrea Mastrovito is an italian multi-media artist (born 1978 in Bergamo) now New York-based.
He received his MFA in 2001 from Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti in Bergamo. He won the New York Prize, awarded by Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007 and the Moroso Prize in 2012. He installed solo shows in private galleries in Milan, Florence, Paris, Geneva, Brussels, New York and in museums and center for contemporary art in Milan, Bergamo, Fort Lauderdale, Toulouse, Rome, Florence, Montélimar and Lacoux.
In 2011 he's been the first artist to have a solo show at Museo del Novecento in Milan.
His works have also been included in many public exhibition all across Europe and United States - MAXXI National Museum of the 21st century and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Pecci, Prato; MART, Rovereto; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; B.P.S. 22, Charleroi, Belgium; M.A.D., New York.
He held public talks at Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Naba, Accademia di Brera, Museo Pecci and Spazio Oberdan in Milan, Palazzo Forti in Verona, American Academy in Rome, Museum Nitsch in Naples, Pavillon Blanc in Colomiers, Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, ISCP and Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York.
He's been commissioned for many public installations and his works have been acquired by dozens of public and private collections in Italy, Europe and U.S.A.
A look back on the making of NYsferatu, combining film, music, and community engagement to create a powerful and poignant statement about immigrant rights in today’s world.
NYsferatu screening with live music at Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2017.
NYsferatu screening at Sunset Park, Brooklyn, 2017.
Re-written title cards for the film, developed during community workshops with recent immigrants and English as new language learners.
Re-written title cards for the film, developed during community workshops with recent immigrants and English as new language learners.
NYsferatu by Andrea Mastrovito, 2017. Frame still.
NYsferatu by Andrea Mastrovito, 2017. Frame still.
NYsferatu by Andrea Mastrovito, 2017. Frame still.
Community workshop at Turning Point Brooklyn, Sunset Park, 2017.
Community workshop at Turning Point Brooklyn, Sunset Park, 2017.
Community workshop at Queens Museum with the New New Yorkers program participants, 2017.
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Community Engagement
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Press
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Supporters & Partners
NYsferatu screening at Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, 2017.
Screenings
July 12, 2018 at Castello a Mare, Palermo, Italy
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
July 10, 2018 at Museo Novecento, Florence, Italy
Institutional greetings and introduction to the film.
Featuring speakers: Sergio Risaliti, Artistic Director Museo Novecento; Tommaso Sacchi, Head of the Secretariat for the Culture Department of the Municipality of Florence; Andrea Mastrovito.
July 9, 2018 at Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
June 14, 2018 at Cinema Nuovo Eden, Brescia, Italy
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
February 11 at April 2, 2018 – Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche, Osnabrück, Germany
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
January 17, 2018 at Les Cinémas du Grütli, Genève, Switzerland
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
October 26 – November 5, 2017 at Rome Film Fest
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
October 13, 2017 at Cantor Film Center
Followed by a roundtable conversation: ‘Our Vampires, Our Selves: Immigrants, Desire, Fear’ with director Andrea Mastrovito, and NYU religious studies scholars Simran Jeet Singh and Angela Zito. Sponsored by NYU Religious Studies, NYU Center for Media Culture and History, NYU Cinema Studies
October 7, 2017 at Printed Matter
Screening followed by a panel discussion Andrea Mastrovito in conversation with Micaela Martegani, Executive Director of More Art, writer Adam Zucker, and Emilie Nilsson of Konnotation.
September 19, 2017 at Italian Cultural Institute
Musical improvisation by Marco Cappelli Acoustic Trio
Featuring Marco Cappelli on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on percussion.
September 15, 2017 at Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY
Musical improvisation by The Marco Cappelli Acoustic Trio
September 14, 2017 at Central Park at Mineral Springs
Musical improvisation by CUP
Featuring Nels Cline of Wilco & Yuka C. Honda of Cibo Matto
September 9, 2017 at Sunset Park on the Central Lawn, Brooklyn
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
Family-friendly drawing and animation art activities start at 6:00pm
September 7, 2017 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
Musical improvisation by The Michael Leonhart Orchestra
August 17, 2017 at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park at Queens Museum
Featuring the original soundtrack by Simone Giuliani
August 14, 2017 at Hudson River Park at Pier 63, Manhattan
Musical improvisation by The Dick Valentine Vampyre Jamboree
Featuring Dick Valentine of Electric Six and James Wells and Quinn English of The Gay Blades
Community workshop at Queens Museum with the New New Yorkers program participants, 2017.
The reimagined storyline of NYsferatu was informed by contributions from recent immigrants and English as new language learners who engaged with Mastrovito and More Art throughout the production of the film. During a series of writing and film studies workshops, new multi-lingual title cards were written in many languages including Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and English by fellow foreign-born New Yorkers whose stories and perspectives are usually left out of mainstream narratives. The meaning and content of the film fundamentally changed based on feedback from the workshops.
“NYsferatu triggered different parts of the imagination and curiosity of our participants. The workshops asked us how this historical interpretation of the film might be counterposed with our current reality,” said Guido Garaycochea, the Manager of the New New Yorkers Program at the Queens Museum where a month-long workshop was held for Queens residents.
“Working on the project, seeing the film, writing, drawing, engaging in critical thinking, particularly exploring the question, ‘what is the vampire in my life?,’ allowed the students of the Turning Point Education Center advanced class to make many connections between their personal experiences as immigrants and current events in the US and in their countries,” said Maritza Arrastia, an ESOL Educator based in Brooklyn.
Turning Point Brooklyn
Since 2015, More Art has partnered with Turning Point Brooklyn, a Sunset Park based organization that provides housing, education, health, and social services for Brooklyn residents. This partnership has focused primarily on arts and music programs for multi-generational adult students enrolled in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses. Every collaboration between More Art, Turning Point educators, organizers and students result in live events and public art exhibitions presented for free to both Sunset Park neighbors and the greater New York City public. More from Turning Point Brooklyn.
Turning Point Brooklyn Collaborators included: Afrah Alzendani, Gilberto Arenas, Rosa Bonilla, Antonia Cortes, Rosa De Leon, Zhong Dong, Jannatul Ferdous, Naha Isa, Qing Yun Ni, Edith Saldivar, Olga Schloma, Huda Yateh, Lizbeth Torres, Li Ping Wang, as well as Turning Point Staff, Maritza Arrastia.
New New Yorkers
In partnership with the Queens Museum’s New New Yorkers program, More Art offered free multilingual film and literature classes to meet the needs of adult immigrant communities in Queens. Courses emphasize the arts and English language acquisition, provided at no cost, in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, and Arabic. More from the New New Yorkers.
New New Yorkers Collaborators included: Patrick Ciccarone, Carol Ciccarone, Daniel Khan, Claudia Cortes, Joaquin Fernando Morales, Chuan-Kuo Jiang, Juliana Acevedo, Yamileth Velasco, Dominic Wong, Tsae Jiaug, Sharlene Chou, Susana Jo, Judy, Yenti Chu, Stacey Martin, Sneha Martin, as well as New New Yorkers Manager, Guido Garaycochea.
Download the curriculum.
Special thanks to guest teaching artists PJ Gubatina Policarpio and Erin Turner.
“Andrea Mastrovito has brought Nosferatu back to life but with unique views on today’s cold modern society and the challenges of immigrants who deal with a challenging personal quest for freedom.” —Ali Vela
Suck City: Movie Brings Old Vampire to New York Brooklyn Paper
Artist Gives New Life to Nosferatu THE ART NEWSPAPER
An Animated Movie Reimagines Nosferatu in Present-Day NYC Hyperallergic
NYsferatu: Symphony of a Century A Modern Cultural Expression DecayMag
35,000 Drawings Turn a Vampire Classic Into a Story of Immigrant New York BEDFORD+BOWERY
Artist Uses Dracula To Make A Point About The NYC Immigrant Experience NEWSY
Animated Recreation of Original Vampire Film Premieres in Free Public Screenings Broadway World
A special thank you to our partners, Turning Point Brooklyn, the Queens Museum’s New New Yorkers program, and NYC Parks.
This project was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambent Foundation, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support was provided by Art Bartschi & Cie, Italian Cultural Institute, Alessi, Percassi, New York University, and Kickstarter.