Vampyr with Mercury Rev & Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins)

Description

Continuing the Festival’s tradition of uniting contemporary musicians with classic film, Mercury Rev, joined by Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins), will illuminate Carl Theodore Dreyer’s atmospheric 1932 horror classic with their shimmering sonic compositions.

Vampyr, the great Danish filmmaker’s follow-up to The Passion of Joan of Arc, is based on elements from a book of stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Dreyer’s first sound film was originally shot in three languages, but is largely told with silent film style intertitles. A student visiting a village inn becomes embroiled in the strange goings-on of a mysterious doctor, an old crone and a young woman afflicted with a terrible curse. Filled with Dryer’s atmospheric black-and-white images—autonomous shadows, brooding fogs, strange reflections—the film progresses in a dream-like mood of haunted dread.

Mercury Rev has been bringing its expressive power to alternative rock since the band formed in the 1980s in Buffalo, New York. They reached the peak of commercial and critical success with their 1998 release Deserter’s Songs (which featured appearances by Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of The Band). The songs on their recently released album, The Light in You, the band’s first in seven years, have been described as “jubilant odes to music itself.”