Opening screening on Saturday, May 9th will be accompanied by an introduction from Must-Watch Indies series programmer Marya E. Gates. On Saturday, May 16 the screening will be presented in glorious Stink-O-Vision with special scratch-and-sniff cards.
Dead Lover, Canadian writer-director-star Grace Glowicki’s genre-defying, expressionistic romantic horror comedy, is a deranged mixture of experimental DIY black box theatre, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Monty Python, and Kenneth Anger.
Featuring a cast of just four actors playing multiple characters, Glowicki stars as a stinky, ostracized Gravedigger whose longing for love is finally answered when she meets the man of her dreams (co-writer Ben Petrie), only for their love affair to end suddenly when he dies at sea, leaving behind only a single finger. Heartbroken and determined to bring back her dead lover, the Gravedigger begins a series of harebrained scientific experiments involving lizards and a fresh corpse.
A silly and yet deeply melancholic examination of loneliness, desire, obsession, and our inability to let go of the ones we love, Dead Lover is unlike anything else you’ll see this year. Shot on luminous 16mm by cinematographer Rhayne Vermette (Levers), Glowicki’s film is another wonderfully idiosyncratic entry in Canada’s post-Guy Maddin indie film landscape.
Dead Lover premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and as part of Midnight Madness at the Toronto International Film Festival.
