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Embry-Riddle Presents Classic Silent Film Nosferatu with Live Music

Max Schreck as Count Orlok Daytona Beach, Fla., Oct. 14, 2009 -- Just in time for Halloween, Embry-Riddle’s Arts & Letters Series will present F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror masterpiece Nosferatu on Tuesday, Oct. 27, accompanied by live organ music.

Based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, this German Expressionist film starring Max Schreck as the evil Count Orlok was the first film to feature a supernatural vampire and is considered one of the greatest movie adaptations of the vampire legend as well as the best silent film in the horror genre. Its striking visual contrasts of light and shadow were later echoed in the film noir genre and the movies of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. The 94-minute Nosferatu will be shown in a digitally restored format.

David Stokes, who holds a master’s degree in organ performance, will match the action of the film with live 1920s-style music. In previous experience with melodramas, defined as live theatrical productions from the same era as silent films, Stokes was the musical director and composer for an equity production of Dirty Work at the Crossroads and a musician with Gold in the Hills, cited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest-running melodrama. Locally, he served as a composer-in-residence with the Ormond Beach Symphony Orchestra and as musical director of the popular Riddle Players production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown performed at Embry-Riddle earlier this year.

The Nosferatu showing is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Willie Miller Instructional Center auditorium on Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, 600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd. Admission is $5 at the door for the general public, or free with Embry-Riddle I.D. card.

For more information, contact humanities professor Alan Pratt at (386) 226-7779 or alan.pratt@erau.edu.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering. Embry-Riddle educates students at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Worldwide Campus at more than 130 campus centers in the United States, Europe, Canada, and the Middle East, and through online learning. For more information, visit www.embryriddle.edu.