- The Castile and León Symphony Orchestra will perform the original score by Wolfgang Zeller under the direction of Robert Ames at the Miguel Delibes Cultural Center
The Castile and León Symphony Orchestra (OSCyL) will provide a live musical accompaniment for the screening of Vampyr, one of the masterpieces of fantasy cinema and one of Carl Th. Dreyer’s most unique films, as a prelude to the 71st Valladolid International Film Festival. The film, released in 1932, was the director’s first sound film and will be part of the ‘A History of Sound’ series, one of the festival’s thematic focuses. Vampyr will be screened on October 22 in the Jesús López Cobos Symphony Hall at the Miguel Delibes Cultural Center, with a performance of the original score by Wolfgang Zeller conducted by British conductor Robert Ames.
Considered one of the seminal films of European fantasy cinema, Vampyr exists in a liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. Allan Gray, a young man fascinated by the occult, arrives in a town where he begins to experience a series of inexplicable events. In a house inhabited by a family threatened by a vampire, he discovers that Léone, one of the daughters, is ill, and he must confront a supernatural presence that seems to transcend the boundaries between reality and imagination.
Filmed shortly after The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr retains many features of silent cinema, but was conceived by Dreyer in the midst of the transition to sound. Its mists, shadows, distorted perspectives, and optical effects construct a deliberately unstable universe, while the sparse dialogue, sound effects, and music all contribute to the same expressive vision. The film is loosely based on stories from Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly.
The screening of Vampyr in Valladolid also offers an opportunity to revisit the work of one of the filmmakers most closely linked to the history of SEMINCI. The festival dedicated a retrospective to him as early as 1964, premiered Gertrud in 1967, and paid tribute to him following his death in 1968 with screenings of The Passion of Joan of Arc and Ordet. In 1995, on the occasion of its 40th edition, SEMINCI once again dedicated a retrospective to him, featuring his complete filmography, and published the book “Carl Theodor Dreyer: On Cinema.”
The Music of a Dream
The OSCyL will perform Wolfgang Zeller’s original score, composed specifically for Vampyr. The music accompanies virtually the entire film and plays an essential role in creating its unsettling atmosphere. The score was reconstructed by composer and conductor Timothy Brock based on Zeller’s original manuscript, which contained numerous handwritten modifications and annotations. The reconstruction also made it possible to recover sound effects integrated into the orchestral score. The copy being screened in Valladolid comes from the 1998 restoration carried out by the Deutsche Kinemathek and the Cineteca di Bologna and was subsequently digitized in 4K for the performances of Zeller’s score.
Robert Ames, conductor, composer, and co-founder of the London Contemporary Orchestra, will serve as musical director. His career has focused particularly on the intersection of contemporary music, film, and other artistic disciplines, and he has conducted ensembles such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony. Ames also has extensive experience in film music and has collaborated with composers such as Philip Glass, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Mica Levi, and Jonny Greenwood. Tickets for the OSCyL screening and concert, priced between 15 and 20 euros, can be purchased at the box office of the Miguel Delibes Cultural Center and online at www.centroculturalmigueldelibes.com.
