Event Details
Date & Time:
Wed October 14, 2026
7 PM
Audience:
Open to the public
Details:
LES VAMPIRES (1916) with live score by Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart
LES VAMPIRES - EPISODE SIX, “HYPNOTIC EYES”
(Louis Feuillade, 1916, approx. 60 min, 16mm)
The celebrated Chicago string trio provides an improvisational score to “Hypnotic Eyes,” the iconic sixth episode of Louis Feuillade’s silent crime serial, presented in 16mm.
RSVP
LES VAMPIRES (1915-1916), Louis Feuillade’s 7-hour crime serial, is one of silent cinema’s greatest pleasures. A tale of an underworld gang terrorizing French society, LES VAMPIRES is stuffed with brazen heists, spectacular assassinations, and larger-than-life villains – among them, the chameleonic Irma Vep, played indelibly by screen diva Musidora. Each of its ten episodes offers an intricate narrative of crime and detection, capture and escape, brought to life with thrillingly inventive filmmaking. After over a century, LES VAMPIRES (1915-1916) still feels like a glimpse into an emerging world: as critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has observed, “Feuillade looks forward to the global paranoia, conspiratorial intrigues, and technological fantasies of the 20th century and beyond.” Championed by the surrealists, venerated by the great film archivist Henri Langlois (who famously rescued the only prints of the film from the trash), an inspiration to French New Wave fabulist Jacques Rivette and arthouse titans Leos Carax and Olivier Assayas – LES VAMPIRES remains a step ahead of us today.
For this special 16mm screening, Block Cinema will present “Hypnotic Eyes,” the longest and most iconic episode of the series, with live accompaniment by the improvisational string trio of Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart. On their recent album Body Sound (International Anthem), described by the Chicago Reader as “sometimes tranquil, sometimes quietly turbulent, and always beautiful,” the trio’s electronically-treated drones invite attentive, responsive listening – a perfect complement to the transfixing suspense of LES VAMPIRES.
Presented in partnership with International Anthem.16mm print courtesy of the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago.
On September 24, in concert with our screening of LES VAMPIRES, Block Cinema will be hosting a 35mm screening of IRMA VEP (1996), Olivier Assayas' playful, self-reflexive tribute to Feuillade's creation.
About the Musicians:
Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, or beautiful in everyday life.
She performs as a soloist, a collaborator and composes works for ensembles. She has presented work and performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Chicago Symphony Center, and Eckhart Park Pool. She has created sound installations for Experimental Sound Studios' Audible Gallery, Grunt's Rare Books, and Roman Susan Art Foundation. She has been a resident artist at ACRE, Vashon Artist Residency, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Stanford University, and Mills College. Recent releases include The Ceiling Reposes on American Dreams Records and Normal Sounds, on Moon Glyph. She tours nationally and internationally.
Whitney Johnson is an artist living in Chicago. Currently, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording. As artist-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and Inkonst in Malmö, Sweden, her latest LP, Hav (2024, Drag City), composed sine waves, marimba, viola, ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and Halldorophone into a multi-channel performance-installation. As Matchess, the Stena cassette (2024, Drag City) embodies an alter ego to join the cult of Hermaphroditus in Cypriot and Greek antiquity. Recent performance-installations FIAT (2025, Roulette Intermedium and 2023, Forecast Platform Berlin), The Tuning of the Elements (2023, Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago), Huizkol (2020, Lampo), and Fundamental 256 Hz (2019, Longform Editions) consider the possibility of brainwave entrainment, an alternative healing technique using binaural beats to induce relaxed or energized mental states. In tandem with her sound practice, she received her doctorate in the sociology of sound from the University of Chicago in 2018 and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship on sound and technology in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University in Sweden in 2022. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Technology/Sound Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About the series: Projecting the Future
In Fall 2026, Block Cinema marks its twenty-fifth anniversary. Founded in 2001 as a student-led film society, Block Cinema has evolved into one of the Midwest's most distinctive university cinema programs, advancing teaching, learning, research, and public engagement through the moving image.
Today, Block Cinema is more than a screening venue. Through public programs, original research, film preservation initiatives, artist collaborations, and student-centered learning opportunities, it serves as a gathering place for the study, presentation, and exploration of cinema in all its forms.
To celebrate this milestone, The Block Museum of Art presents “Projecting the Future: Block Cinema at 25,” a year-long series of screenings, performances, conversations, and special initiatives throughout the 2026-2027 academic year that explore the evolving possibilities of the moving image. Organized around several core areas of activity, the anniversary year highlights Block Cinema's commitment to research and discovery, innovative forms of cinematic experience, and the next generation of students, artists, and audiences.
Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu