1922: The Birth of Now

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Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

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1922: The Birth of Now: Nosferatu and Modernist Horror

Nosferatu and Modernist Horror

BBC Radio 4 - 1922: The Birth of Now, Nosferatu and Modernist Horror

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, the first vampire film and its influence after a century

F. W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,  the first vampire film, is a masterpiece of German Expressionism.. A century later such stories are as popular as ever.

1922: The Birth of Now - Ten programmes in which Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

7. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. F. W. Murnau's 1922 gothic masterpiece is the first vampire movie. It is German Expressionism in cinematic form and still influences contemporary film-makers. It’s also a film about disease: Count Orlok - a rip-off of Dracula that got Bram Stoker’s family lawyers on the case – brings plague to Mittel Europe. What does this disease mean, in a Europe that has just survived war and pandemic? Matthew Sweet and guests including Dana Gioia, the award-winning poet and critic who wrote the libretto to composer Alva Henderson's Nosferatu: The Opera,  first produced in 2004, and the literary scholars Roger Luckhurst and Lisa Mullen.

Producer: Julian May

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1922: The Birth of Now

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