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Guy Maddin: Director Guy Maddin
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The films of Canadian director Guy Maddin are like a waking dream -- a surreal, shimmering landscape where hypnotists walk hand-in-hand with amnesiacs through fields of artificial ice and snow. "I quickly learned that the cheapest prop is a shadow," Maddin has observed with humor -- and if anything, his films are a wild triumph of imagination over budget limitations: transforming an abandoned iron works into the mystical land of Mandragora (TWILIGHT OF THE ICE NYMPHS); inventing pseudo-Slavic languages and place-names (TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL); re-visiting what he calls the "largely disused film vocabulary" of silent movies, including tinted stocks, deliberately-scratchy soundtracks and title cards.
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Over the course of a career that has spanned nearly two decades and 25 films, both short and feature, filmmaker Guy Maddin has provided his viewers with more than their fair share of unique, cinematic moments. To provide just one example, in Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), his first feature film, the audience is allowed to watch as one of the director's many eccentric characters, a male who is attempting to make himself more attractive to the ladies relaxing on a nearby beach, disappears behind a dilapidated building, troubled that his hair is dry and in such a mess. At this point, the audience may expect that some grooming is in order, but most first time viewers could never predict how such a grooming process will eventually unfold. Out of sight from the women, the character manages to find a shiny, dead fish, which he then squeezes frantically over his head, until its guts are wretched open, spilling fish oil all over the man's hair. The character soon reemerges, hair slicked back and full of fish oil. He is now ready to properly swoon the ladies still lying on the sands of Gimli beach.
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An interview with Guy Maddin is more like a rollicking conversation with an old friend than a formal exchange of questions and answers. Thus, when contacted by phone at his Winnipeg home, Canada’s most fanciful filmmaker began the discussion by bewailing his monthlong travails with a local telephone company. After that brief preamble, though, everything was motion pictures in general and Brand Upon the Brain! in particular, the director’s new expressionistic horror movie. Maddin insists his latest is “a lot more autobiographical than you might think”, even if it was shot around the waters of Puget Sound rather than the more familiar shores of Lake Winnipeg.
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Shying away from the conventional, Director Guy Maddin introduces his innovative take on the silent-era film with a bold new cinematic/live action spectacle, "Brand Upon The Brain!" Never afraid to push the envelope, Maddin continues to examine social boundaries and explore the common truths too often ignored by mainstream media and politely tucked away from everyday discourse. Uncompromising, Maddin turns the standards of yesteryear on its head to provoke his loyal audiences with BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! - a live-performance, black and white silent film - that's currently touring the nation.
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Loosely based on his own life, director Guy Maddin ("The Saddest Music in the World") presents this mind-bending silent film set in 1930s Winnipeg. Told in 10 separate chapters, the story follows a talented young hockey player whose life takes a bizarre--and murderous--turn after he takes his girlfriend to get an abortion in a surreal clinic/hair salon. Darcy Fehr, Melissa Dionisio, Amy Stewart star. AKA: "The Blue Hands." 64 min. Standard; Soundtrack: music score; audio commentary; behind-the-scenes footage; bonus footage; photo gallery. Silent with music score.
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Guy Maddin is the award-winning director of TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988) ARCHANGEL (1990), CAREFUL (1992), TWILIGHT OF THE ICE NYMPHS (1997), THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (2003), and BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (2006). Among his numerous accolades are a Genie Award for best live-action short for THE HEART OF THE WORLD (2000), and Gemini and Emmy Awards for DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN'S DIARY (2002). In 1995, Maddin received a Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Telluride Film Festival, the youngest person ever to have been awarded this honour.
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Director Guy Maddin