claire rousay, The Bloody Lady (Live Score) and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe: VIFF 2025
Experience an evening of haunted sonic underworlds and storytelling at the edge of human perception from acclaimed composers and musicians claire rousay and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.
Los Angeles–based composer claire rousay offers a rare live score performance of The Bloody Lady — a Slovakian animated classic that is widely considered one of Slovak animation’s crown jewels. Viktor Kubal’s 1981 film, The Bloody Lady, is an improbable and bewitching fusion of gothic horror and classic children’s animation that retells a famous folktale often cited as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Its clean, simple animation style, full of primary colours, is beautifully juxtaposed with the film’s dread-filled story and rousay’s haunting, minimalist score. The film tells the tale of Lady Báthory, who lives in a castle surrounded by Disneyesque wildlife. When she falls ill in a forest during a storm, Lady Báthory makes a deal with a handsome woodsman for her health. But when she returns to the castle, her usually sunny disposition soon becomes murderous and vampiric. For this special VIFF Live concert, claire rousay will perform her new live score of the film.
After being handpicked by director Nia Dacosta to create the beautifully unnerving film score for her 2021 film Candyman, co-written by Jordan Peele, New York composer and sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s mesmeric soundscapes have begun to reach an increasingly wider audience through cinema. Over the last 7 years or so, Lowe’s focus on film work has expanded a studio practice in ways that speak directly to the aleatoric processes Lowe has come to be known for for decades now. Known for electroacoustic composition and performance using voice and modular synthesizers to highlight a heightened physicality of sound, Lowe’s work weaves the sensitivity of modular synthesis with vocal expression to reach a hypnogogic or trancelike state of ecstatic, improvised sound.
For VIFF Live, Lowe will present an improvisation performance providing a window into his cinematic worlds by way of multiple textures and timbres associated with his scores to such films as The Man in My Basement, Candyman, Grasshopper Republic, UNION, Power and two films, Seeds and Life After, which will be screening at VIFF 2025
Tuesday, October 7
8:00 pm
Tickets HERE
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VIFF thanks the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations for their continued stewardship of the unceded and occupied land on which our work takes place. As an organization founded and predominantly directed by settlers and immigrants, we understand our responsibility to seek out and build authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, and to allow this ongoing dialogue to influence our practices. As part of this process, we remain committed to collaborating with and supporting Indigenous artists, filmmakers, curators, and audiences.