2009 Filmmaker on the Edge

Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin, the world's foremost cineaste planant, was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba: the coldest and most central city in North America. His filmic output to date - nine feature-length projects and innumerable shorts - is a remarkable canon of fantasia. Viewing a Maddin movie, short- or long-form, it's hard not to conclude that there must have been some strange alchemy on the set - the pictures seem woven and filigreed rather than simply, bluntly "shot" as other movies are; and furthermore must have been magicked together by a team of pillow-sleeved artistes with a rouged, beret-clad Maddin shrieking directions in falsetto from a golden velvet throne floating atop a dais of honeyed mist.

However, he is, in person and on set, quite a normal man. His first feature, TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL, appeared in 1988, and became a midnight-movie classic. His second, ARCHANGEL, won the U.S. National Film Critics Award for best experimental film. Since then he has won many other awards - including the Telluride Silver Medal for life achievement in 1995, the San Francisco International Film Festival's prestigious Persistance of Vision award in 2006, and others - and created dozens of beguiling films in his unique personal style. These include such celebrated feature works as THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (2003); BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (2006); and MY WINNIPEG (2007).