CIRCUIT DES YEUX’s Live Score of F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU (1922)

This event is part of 7th House's October series ETERNAL DARKNESS: A CENTURY OF NOSFERATU. See below for info.

As part of their monthlong celebration of NOSFERATU's shadowy legacy, 7th House proudly invites you to a special presentation of F.W. Murnau's original, classic expressionist nightmare NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) with an unforgettable live score performed by the hypnotic and haunting CIRCUIT DES YEUX!

The film that began it all. Over a century since its controversial release, F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU remains one of cinema’s most unsettling visions, a work that transfigured Bram Stoker’s Dracula into a dream of pestilence and dread. When Murnau released Nosferatu in 1922, he did so without permission from Bram Stoker’s estate. A court ordered all prints destroyed—yet like its own cursed subject, the film survived, resurrected from fragments to become one of the most influential works in cinema history and the screen’s first true horror film.

What elevates Nosferatu beyond folklore is Murnau’s visionary craft. Filmed partly on location in the harbors, mountains, and villages of Eastern Europe, the film fuses natural landscapes with expressionist imagery: crooked doorways, elongated shadows, coffins of earth. Cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner’s stark contrasts of light and darkness, his haunting compositions of figures dwarfed by looming architecture, make every frame feel like a haunted etching. Even primitive special effects—time-lapse clouds racing across the sky, doors opening by themselves, Orlok fading into nothing—retain their spectral potency.

The mysterious Max Schreck’s Count Orlok is no suave aristocrat but a creature of rat-like hunger: bald, hunched, clawed, with eyes that burn like lanterns in the skull. His performance, whether in the slinking gait of his shadow or the blank stare of his gaze, has lost none of its power to disturb. Surrounding him, Murnau cast actors who embody fragile humanity: Gustav von Wangenheim as the trembling Hutter, Greta Schröder as the sacrificial Ellen, and Alexander Granach as the mad, grinning Knock. Their stylized gestures, heightened by silent-era expressiveness, give the story an uncanny theatricality, caught between realism and nightmare.

Join us as we witness the original NOSFERATU as never before, reimagined with with a wholly original live score by the startlingly singular and dreamily haunting Circuit des Yeux, as image and music merge to conjure a collective dream: fragile, flickering, and unforgettable – like the vampire itself, forever lingering in shadowy memory.

Dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922, 83 mins., Germany, Silent w/ English Intertitles, B&W, Unrated, Digital.

Tickets: $24 (In Person Only Event)

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux)

A musician, composer, and multidisciplinary artist, Fohr’s work defies easy categorization. It has encompassed acclaimed albums, free-form improvisation, and large ensemble compositions. Throughout, the center of Fohr’s music has been her voice. It is a powerful, seemingly supernatural instrument — a four-octave span that can span gentle melodies and elemental wails.

In 2018, Fohr created an original soundtrack for Charles Bryant’s Salomé (1923), which was commissioned by Opera North and performed at the Barbican in London, Art Institute of Chicago, and beyond. Notable artist residencies and commissions include a 40 piece choral composition with Brooklyn Youth Chorus (The Receptionist), an interactive anechoic sculpture (Big Black Box), and a for pipe organ (Breathing Machine).

Her most recent full-length, Halo on the Inside, was released earlier this year on Matador Records and was met with effusive praise from Pitchfork, NPR, and The New York Times.

ETERNAL DARKNESS: A CENTURY OF NOSFERATU

It was over one hundred years ago that NOSFERATU first crept from the darkness. Born of an unsanctioned adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, F.W. Murnau’s frightful and fevered 1922 Expressionist masterpiece gave the vampire its first cinematic form but was condemned, by court, to death. Yet like its cadaverous Count, it refused to perish, its immortality taking root to cast a shadow across eras, filmmakers, and forms, stalking our collective imaginations. From that cursed survival came a lineage of dark reflections including Werner Herzog’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979), a hypnotically haunted dirge of devotion and decay, E. Elias Merighe’s delirious metafictional nightmare SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, an uncanny imagining of the monster behind the mask, and Robert Eggers’s bold and visionary reimagining NOSFERATU (2024), a cinematically sumptuous elegy to Murnau’s undying myth. On Thursdays this October, 7th House’s ETERNAL DARKNESS: A CENTURY OF NOSFERATU unites these distinct, haunted visions, culminating with a special presentation of Murnau’s original masterpiece, NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) with an immersive live score by the haunting and elementally powerful CIRCUIT DES YEUX.

• October 9th – Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979)
• October 16th – Robert Eggers's NOSFERATU (2024) w/ special guests TBA
• October 23rd – E. Elias Merighe SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE (2000) w/ director in person!
• October 30th – F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) w/ live score by CIRCUIT DES YEUX

ADVISORY DISCLAIMER

With some exception, The Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House Screenings does not typically provide advisory warnings about potentially upsetting content or subject matter, as sensitivities are particular to each viewer. Please be sure to read event listings, research on the web, or visit Common Sense Media, IMDb, and DoesTheDogDie.com for thorough info on content and age-appropriateness. If you have any specific content advisory questions, please email events@prs.org.

CONTENT DISCLAIMER

The views, opinions, and thoughts expressed within exhibited works are solely those of their creators and may not represent those of the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), its affiliates, or any individuals associated with PRS. Screenings are intended for educational and entertainment purposes.

ACCESSIBILITY

PRS wants all guests to be able to enjoy our events safely and comfortably. If you require any accessibility accommodation, please reach out to events@prs.org before showtime and we will be happy to assist you.

REFUND POLICIES

All sales are final. There are no refunds for PRS events , except in the event of a medical emergency, including but not limited to a positive COVID-19 test. Ticket exchanges may be granted on a case by case basis, pending circumstances.

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PARKING

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