Skip to main content
Vampyr film image; man holding a scythe and ringing a bell

Vampyr

This event has passed

This Halloween, experimental music duo Magazinist will perform a live score to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932). Once described by Guillermo del Toro as being “the closest you get to poetry in film,” Vampyr combines dreamlike cinematography with nightmarish tableaux to depict the shadowy events of a small village where occult forces are at work.

Magazinist conjure a haunting shroud of sound using an array of supernatural contraptions, including a homemade tagelharpa, dulcimers, zithers, synthesizers, and ethereal vocal drones. Like the film’s somnambulant protagonist, Magazinist’s live score evokes an out-of-body experience with trance-like requiems and a chilling fog of gauzy textures.

As Gillian McIver notes: “In Vampyr characters always look up, they try to hear the noises that may not even exist. For example, Allan hears barking dogs and a crying baby, and then finds out that there are none in the house.” Indeed, Vampyr is one of the most hallucinatory films in the horror canon, a work of “startling beauty and maddening mystery; it is a vampire film like no other to date.”

Following two sold-out live scorings of Metropolis and Faust, Magazinist return to the VIFF Centre on October 27 with a few new tricks up their sleeves. And on that note: costumes encouraged!

Guest
Director

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Cast

Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz, Jan Hieronimko, Henriette Gérard

Credits
Country of Origin

Denmark

Year

1932

Language

In German with English subtitles (Film)

19+
73 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Guest

Magazinist joint headshot

Magazinist

Magazinist is an experimental sound art duo whose compositions make use of found sources, visual and sonic collage, and materially-driven processes. Their installations, including Reverse Search (2020) and Hotel Fata Morgana (2019), attempt to make intangible landscapes of media hearable, seeable, and feelable. Combining analog synthesis, digital sampling, and hand-built instrumentation, Magazinist conducts extended sonic studies in the form of immersive installations and multimedia performances. As independent artists, Matthew Tomkinson and Andy Zuliani have presented their work at CBC, VIFF, PuSh, VIDF, New Forms, Dance in Vancouver, Tanzmesse, Vines Art Festival, Active Passive, Dancing on the Edge, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Deep Blue, Lobe Spatial Sound Studio, and more. Magazinist operates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Learn More

Credits

Screenwriter

Christen Jul, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Cinematography

Rudolph Maté

Original Music

Wolfgang Zeller

Art Director

Hermann Warm

Also Playing

A Duke Ellington Tribute with the Mike Braverman Sextet
man posed to play a piano

A Duke Ellington Tribute with the Mike Braverman Sextet

150 min

After a scintillating session of Duke standards performed by The Mike Braverman Sextet, enjoy a roundup of Ellingtonia on Film: his first short sound films from the late 20s and 30s, and clips from the scores he composed in the 50s and 60s.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Kryptic

Dir. Kourtney Roy
96 min

Oozing psycho-sexual anxiety, Kourtney Roy's fascinating feminist horror movie feints toward creature-feature quirk, but morphs into something much stranger. Chloe Pirrie plays a double role, or maybe Everywoman, adrift in a world of men and monsters.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Mary Ancheta Plays Betty Davis Tribute

Dir. Phil Cox
150 min

In this VIFF Live event, keyboardist Mary Ancheta and her band channel the phenomenal funk of 70s sensation Betty Davis, featuring Dawn Pemberton on vocals. The live music portion of the event will be followed by Phil Cox's invaluable 2017 documentary, They Say I'm Different.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

That They May Face the Rising Sun

Dir. Pat Collins
111 min

John and Kate have moved from London to a farm in Ireland, to the bemusement of the locals. This lyrical Irish reverie taps deep wells of feeling in the stuff of everyday life.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Secret Mall Apartment

Dir. Jeremy Workman
91 min

The stranger-than-fiction true story of a group of artists who built and furnished a hidden apartment inside a mall, remaining undetected for years. This is an absurdly fun and surprisingly profound film about gentrification and art.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Encampments

Dir. Michael T. Workman & Kei Pritsker
82 min

When pro-Palestine protests took hold of Columbia last year, the filmmakers were there from the beginning. This documentary charts the mounting tensions between students and the administration, as the protests were picked up across North America.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre