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26 November 2015: Vampyr

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Vampyr

Carl Th. Dreyer
1932 | 72 min | B/W | Digital

With Vampyr, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result – concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside Paris – is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.


Part of our season Superstition, Witchcraft, Body without Organs and the Occult