The Cinema Arts Centre will welcome acclaimed filmmaker Michael Almereyda for a special in-person screening of his cult classic Nadja (1994), a hypnotic reimagining of vampire mythology that merges gothic romance, avant-garde experimentation, and downtown New York cool. The screening will take place on Friday, February 27th at 7 PM, with Almereyda present to introduce the film and engage with audiences.
Merging elements of Dracula’s Daughter (1936) with André Breton’s surrealist novel Nadja (1928), Almereyda’s Nadja fuses shimmering black-and-white cinematography with hallucinatory Pixelvision video to create a dreamlike, genre-defying atmosphere. The film centers on Nadja (Elina Löwensohn), a New York–based vampire who draws close to her twin brother Edgar (Jared Harris) following their father’s death at the hands of Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda). As Van Helsing pursues “the fiend” from Manhattan to Transylvania, a web of desire and obsession ensnares Edgar’s private nurse (Suzy Amis), Van Helsing’s nephew Jim (Martin Donovan), and Jim’s wife (Galaxy Craze). Executive produced by David Lynch, Nadja has endured as a singular work of 1990s independent cinema.
One of independent cinema’s most inquisitive and idiosyncratic voices, Michael Almereyda is a director, screenwriter, and producer whose work moves fluidly between narrative features, documentaries, and experimental forms, often probing memory, technology, and artistic obsession. He first gained attention with the lo-fi, genre-bending Nadja (1994), before going on to direct a boldly contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (2000), starring Ethan Hawke.
Almereyda’s wide-ranging body of work includes the documentary William Eggleston in the Real World (2005), the intellectually playful biographical drama Experimenter (2015), the quietly profound sci-fi meditation Marjorie Prime (2017), and the offbeat portrait of a visionary outsider, Tesla (2020). Both Marjorie Prime and Tesla received the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, underscoring Almereyda’s ongoing fascination with the intersections of science, art, and human consciousness.
This special screening offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience Nadja on the big screen and to engage directly with one of American cinema’s most distinctive filmmakers.
Location: Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave, Huntington, NY 11743
Fees per screening: $18 Public | $11 Cinema Arts Centre Members
You can purchase tickets or find more information about these and other events on the Cinema Arts Centre website: www.cinemaartscentre.org