The Student of Prague, also knowns as A Bargain with Satan, is an early German thriller made in 1913, shortly before the start of World War I. The script draws on three literary sources: Edgar Allan Poe’s story William Wilson, Alfred de Musset’s poem Nuit de décembre, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe play Faust.
The film marks a series of firsts: it is the first independent film, the first auteur film, the first art film, and the first feature-length thriller horror in the history of cinema. The screening will be accompanied by the original music of CelloFun, an electro-acoustic formula especially created for silent film, as well as by Romania’s well-known “film voice” Irina Margareta Nistor, who will read fragments from Alfred de Musset’s poem.
Irina Margareta Nistor – reading, simultaneous translation
CelloFun (Bucharest/Cluj-Napoca):
Attila J. Szabó – cello, electronic instruments
Maria Petrescu – oboe, straight flue
Alina Agafiței – voice, percussion
Radu Rădescu – percussion, concept & text selection