Tonight, the Antwerp film club Het Kwade Oog is holding its 25th meeting. The anniversary screening consists of "Vampyr" by Karl Theodor Dreyer (1932) and "Scorpio Rising" by Kenneth Anger (1963), in other words: cinematic art of the highest order, with a contrarian opening.
It is a treat to see "Vampyr" for the first time; afterwards, it becomes a delightful addiction to the urge to experience this film over and over again.
It all began with a bizarre Dutch baron who provided Dreyer with money to film a ghost story, starring the financier himself as a hallucinating traveler.

Four years after the artistic triumph of "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" (1928), Dreyer was still struggling to make ends meet because the now highly reputed classic had unfortunately also been a financial flop. With "Vampyr," he made his first sound film, in which dialogue is virtually absent. This did not become a commercial breakthrough either, but in a posthumous perspective, the intangible value naturally carries more weight.

Kenneth Anger is the specialist in exaggerated gossip about the American film industry, captured in the three-part series "Hollywood Babylon". In addition, he is a steadily producing underground filmmaker, who groups his work under the name Magick Lantem Cycle. From Andere Sinema 104 we quote: "Both in his books and in his films, Anger aims for the total disillusionment of the 'dream machine'; he records coolly, but with a large dose of black humor, the demise of an illusionistic world, and the lifting of a once obscuring veil. Anger is driven by love for the illusion, and regret at the dismantling of it, which he himself, mind you, wanted to bring about. In Sorpio Rising, he focuses on glorifying and thwarting 1950s nostalgia. Is this an impossible dialectic or a successful contrast?

The judgment is yours, at 8:00 PM. (PB)

Screening on Tuesday, November 12, at 8:00 PM at the A.M.V.C., Minderbroederstraat 22 in Antwerp. Reservations can be made at 03/236.82.59 or 234.16.40.

Download pdf: 19911101pr-de-jaren.pdf