Tag Archives: Vampires vs. nano silver rap

Vampires, nanotechnology and derivative works

A vampire versus silver nano rap, eh? The Oct. 28, 2011 item on Nanwerk titled, Nano Halloween Special – Vampires and nanotechnology don’t mix, offers one up (about 1 1/2 mins. long) just in time for the Halloween weekend.

Continuing with the vampire theme but on a completely different topic, Tim Cushing in his Oct. 28,2011 posting on Techdirt offers this story in his discussion of derivative works,

Jonathan Bailey of the Plagarism Today blog has written up a fascinating piece on the early copyright battle between Bram Stoker’s estate and Albin Grau, the producer of the 1922 film “Nosferatu.”

Film producer Albin Grau originally got the idea to shoot a vampire movie in 1916. Serving in Serbia during WWI, Grau was inspired to make a film about vampires after speaking with local farmers about the lore.

Grau, however, hit a major snag. He had wanted to do a expressionistic retelling of the story of Dracula but the estate of Bram Stoker, spearheaded by his widow, Florence Stoker, would not sell him the rights. Though the book was already in the public domain in the U.S. due to an error in copyright notice (similar to the one that caused Night of the Living Dead to lapse 45 years later),

The film was made and,

… Since early prints still contained the name “Dracula,” the court ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed. Grau was forced to file for bankruptcy and his film studio was shuttered. “Nosferatu” would have been nothing more than a tiny footnote in film and copyright history, but one copy had already made its way to the U.S., where Stoker’s work was public domain.

If the estate had been 100% successful, we likely wouldn’t have performance pieces such as the “Vampires vs Silver Nano” rap. Lucky for us all that Dracula/Nosferatu made his way into popular culture to spawn so much creativity and fun.