Vampyr (1932)
With an original live score by Lori GoldstonJanuary 10 & 13, 2025
Grand Illusion CinemaSeattle, WA
Part of the Grand Illusion Cinema’s series Farewell to 1403
Cellist Lori Goldston performs an original live score for Carl Dreyer’s 1932 uncanny masterpiece, presented on 16mm film.
One of cinema’s most poetic nightmares, Vampyr is a waking dream of hauntingly beautiful and unsettling imagery. A drifter arrives at a small village inn, discovering a family beset by mysterious forces, living shadows, and a malevolent old woman. Reality and nightmare blur as vampiric dread stalks the village, the family, and the drifter himself.
A critical and box office failure that derailed Dreyer’s career for a decade, today it is hailed as a unique and influential treasure, beloved by directors like Del Toro, Tarkovsky, and Polansky.
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, semi-feral spirit Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer, and teacher. Her voice as a cellist is full, textured, committed, and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time, and geography.
“Vampyr is as close as you get to poetry in film. It’s truly a meditation on life and death and the beyond.” – Guillermo del Toro
“A triumph of the irrational, Dreyer’s eerie memento mori never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare.” – Anton Bitel, Channel 4 (UK )
“This horror classic is an original experimental masterpiece… Some of the most expressive horror films can be traced back to Dreyer’s oneiric chiller.” – Glenn Erickson, TrailersFromHell.com
“A genius of a both diabolical and mysterious kind bursts forth in these muted, oppressive images — as the juice seeps from an overripe fruit.” – Marcel Carné
Cellist Lori Goldston performs an original live score for Carl Dreyer’s 1932 uncanny masterpiece, presented on 16mm film.
One of cinema’s most poetic nightmares, Vampyr is a waking dream of hauntingly beautiful and unsettling imagery. A drifter arrives at a small village inn, discovering a family beset by mysterious forces, living shadows, and a malevolent old woman. Reality and nightmare blur as vampiric dread stalks the village, the family, and the drifter himself.
A critical and box office failure that derailed Dreyer’s career for a decade, today it is hailed as a unique and influential treasure, beloved by directors like Del Toro, Tarkovsky, and Polansky.
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, semi-feral spirit Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer, and teacher. Her voice as a cellist is full, textured, committed, and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time, and geography.
“Vampyr is as close as you get to poetry in film. It’s truly a meditation on life and death and the beyond.” – Guillermo del Toro
“A triumph of the irrational, Dreyer’s eerie memento mori never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare.” – Anton Bitel, Channel 4 (
UK )“This horror classic is an original experimental masterpiece… Some of the most expressive horror films can be traced back to Dreyer’s oneiric chiller.” – Glenn Erickson, TrailersFromHell.com
“A genius of a both diabolical and mysterious kind bursts forth in these muted, oppressive images — as the juice seeps from an overripe fruit.” – Marcel Carné
