Whereas the vampire has been known to exhibit no mirror reflection, it has been intuited that there are models of vampires in the moving image that obey to alternative mirror manifestations.
Vampiric Reflections is a film essay by artist and filmmaker Oscar Debs. Using footage of various vampire – and non-vampire – films, and setting from analyzing some of their classic tropes, the project constructs alternative vampiric forms. One such example is the presence of a non-identical mirror reflection pertaining to a specific vampire, instead of the traditional absence of the reflection. The capture of vampires in the moving image is tackled as well, taking into consideration the technology of recent digital cameras.
As curator at Cinemateket Trondheim, Oscar’s curatorial material is taken from his essayistic/film theory project, to program a series of film screenings, from classics such as Dracula and Nosferatu, to more contemporary movies. These will be structured as follows:
Chapter I: The vampire’s tunneling/teleporting
Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau 1922)
Dracula [Ch. I] (Tod Browning 1931)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour 2014)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Ch. I] (Francis Ford Coppola 1992)
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (Mel Brooks 1995)
Chapter II: Regression/Reversal & Slowing
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (Mel Brooks 1995)
Dracula [Ch. II] (Tod Browning 1931)
The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski 1967)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula [Ch. II] (Francis Ford Coppola 1992)
Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer 1932)
Orphée (Jean Cocteau 1950)
Stand-alone:
Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night (Werner Herzog 1979)
Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night [Rerun] (Werner Herzog 1979)
Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher 1958)
Chapter III: The Image-Vampire, at a frequency
Blacula (William Crain 1972)
Chapter IV: A Twin’s double tunneling
Black Sunday/The Mask of Satan (Mario Bava 1960)
Chapter V: Blood Junkies
The Addiction (Abel Ferrara 1995)
Kicking Blood (Blaine Thurier 2021)
Martin (George A. Romero 1977)
Chapter VI: Summoning the victim in the mirror
The Hunger (Tony Scott 1983)
Chapter VII: Into the mirror
Atlantique (Mati Diop 2019)
Orphée (Jean Cocteau 1950)
Chapter VIII: The Flesh is the Life
Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis 2001)
Chapter IX: Trans-facing/trance-facing
Fedora (Billy Wilder 1978)
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang 1933)
Dracula (John Badham 1979)
Readings will be suggested to the public to accompany some of the films, particularly where the chapter theme is most relevant. There will also be a couple of presentation sessions by Oscar following some of the screenings, often incorporating the proposed texts.
Finally, Oscar will be screening and presenting his project in its progress as a summary to the curation project.
