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Monday, Apr 28, 2008 8:00 PM
Showcasing his signature use of silent and early sound era cinema, this is Director Guy Maddin's loving tribute to his hometown in Manitoba.
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80 minutes
Directed by: Guy Maddin
New England Premiere
Co-presented by Central Bank, presenting sponsor of the narrative feature films
Screening Supported by the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film
Guy Maddin's Winnipeg is unlike any other city you've ever encountered. He paints Manitoba's capital as a myth-rich land with grueling winters, a network of secret back lanes and byways, an old commercial signage graveyard and a single sledding hill made entirely out of a few decades worth of garbage. He explains how its hockey-loving, sleepwalking denizens have participated in labor strikes, standoffs to protect the world's smallest park (a tree in the exact middle of a lane) and department store-sponsored male beauty pageants. He even claims that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was impressed by the town's unique "psychic possibilities" which included séances conducted via ballet dancing.
In his first documentary, Maddin continues to refine his inimitable style that heavily draws upon silent and early-sound era cinema. Complemented by suggestive intertitles and the occasional animated reenactment, stock footage and newly-shot sequences feverishly coalesce to the point where it's not always easy to identify an image as one or the other. At one point, the filmmaker moves back into his childhood home with his mother (actually played by 86-year-old Ann Savage, star of the 1945 film noir DETOUR) and casts actors to portray his three siblings. Together, they recreate the family dynamic, circa 1963 (with riotous dialogue straight out of a B-movie melodrama). Throughout, Maddin's voiceover narration veers from the acerbic to the poetic as he reflects on childhood traumas (an incident at a three-story, gender-segregated pool), mourns for lost landmarks (his beloved, demolished Winnipeg Arena) and altogether celebrates his one-of-a-kind hometown.
-Chris Krioske
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