This Magic Moment: The Aesthetic Devices of Jean Epstein and Edgar Allan Poe Reimagined

In 1928, filmmaker Jean Epstein produced La Chute de la Maison Usher: a masterpiece of Gothic cinema. It is an adaptation of two of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Oval Portrait”. The study of this intersection of Jean Epstein and Edgar Allan Poe has led to the production of a triptych (a suite of three films): I Work For the Devil, Tonight You Belong to Me, and The Night-Side of Nature. The project explores a theory-in-action known as “photogénie”, and how this method invigorates experimental cinema in the twenty-first century.