Sunday 23 March 2008

In Search of... Documentaries

Continuing on the theme of documentaries, I think the first documentary on the subject was the 1975 Swedish Vem var Dracula?, better known as In Search of Dracula. The Swedish title means Who was Dracula? and was the title of the Swedish translation of Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally's bestselling book In Search of Dracula which was the inspiration for the documentary.

I saw it on Swedish television back then and I'd say that I almost grew up on the mythology of that book. Well, you couldn't avoid being affected by it if you were into the subject back then. Much later on it's been pretty stimulating to see how it has been debunked by Elisabeth Miller in Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000/2006).

The documentary is probably most memorable for its sequences featuring Christopher Lee as Vlad Tepes, but it also contains a bit of information on folkloric vampires, although not particularly useful to anyone seriously interested in Magia Posthuma. I can't find any clips on youtube to link to, but it should be pretty easy to obtain on DVD (my own copy is American and contains a commemorative booklet on the making of the documentary).

I have, however, found this nicely produced mixture of various folkloric bits and pieces that various authors have somehow connected with vampires. It's more entertaining than enlightening, and delightfully short...



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