Winnipeg Arena was an indoor arena located in the Polo Park district of Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada.
121-546: My Winnipeg is a 2007 Canadian film directed and written by Guy Maddin with dialogue by George Toles. Described by Maddin as a "docu-fantasia", that melds "personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing", the film is a surrealist mockumentary about Winnipeg , Maddin's home town. A New York Times article described the film's unconventional take on the documentary style by noting that it "skates along an icy edge between dreams and lucidity, fact and fiction, cinema and psychotherapy". My Winnipeg began when Maddin
242-474: A "Winnipeg Map" by artist Marcel Dzama featuring such fictional attractions as "The Giant Squid of the Red [River]", various poster designs for the film, and short articles about working with Maddin by Andy Smetanka , Darcy Fehr , and Caelum Vatnsdal. Maddin also includes an angry e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, collages and notebooks pages, and an X-ray of the dog Spanky from the film. Winnipeg Arena The arena
363-463: A "docufantasia" approach that melded "personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing", Maddin produced My Winnipeg (2008), with a budget of $ 500,000. Maddin re-cast Darcy Fehr in the role of "Guy Maddin" and structured the documentary around a metafictional plot whereby "Guy Maddin" attempts to "film his way out" of the frozen city. Maddin rents out his former home and hires actors to play his family (including Ann Savage as his mother) in
484-552: A 2012 installation at the Winnipeg Art Gallery , Maddin re-created his teenage bedroom. On the wall of the re-created bedroom screens a 19-minute short film Maddin produced by digitally distressing his family's home movies. Expanding the approach of his Hauntings installation, Maddin's ongoing film/installation project, Seances . The film shoots were open to the public and streamed online, and thereby presented as live art installation projects, during which Maddin, along with
605-605: A Canadian soldier suffering from amnesia, arrives in the town of Archangel as World War I is ending (due to the Bolshevik uprising, it appears as if the townspeople have, like Boles, contracted amnesia and "forgotten" that the war is over). Boles confuses the warrior-woman Veronkha with his lost love Iris and pursues her throughout the fighting. Fellow "drone" Kyle McCulloch stars as Boles. The film marks Maddin's first formal collaboration with fellow screenwriter George Toles. Maddin shot Archangel in black-and-white, on 16 mm film, on
726-567: A budget of $ 30,000. Developed as a series of short films, commissioned as part of an installation art project by Toronto art gallery The Power Plant that was curated by Philip Monk, these 10 short films, collected together, constituted a short feature, so that Maddin ended up completing and releasing two feature films in 2003. Cowards Bend the Knee is the first in Maddin's "autobiographical 'Me Trilogy'" of feature films starring protagonists named "Guy Maddin",
847-416: A budget of CA$ 430,000 (equivalent to CA$ 861,645 in 2023). Maddin modeled the film on the style of a part-talkie , an early cinema genre. Film critic J. Hoberman praised the film, and noted that such stylistic approaches were typical of Maddin's growing body of work: "Maddin's most distinctive trait is an uncanny ability to exhume and redeploy forgotten cinematic conventions." Archangel premiered at
968-531: A buffalo stampede set off by the mating of two gay bison. Time is now running out for Guy Maddin, who fears he will never leave Winnipeg, since the family re-enactments have failed to free him fully. To accomplish this feat of leaving, Maddin imagines a pinup girl for the 1919 strike's newsletter The Citizen : dreaming up this "Citizen Girl" allows Maddin to leave Winnipeg, guilt-free. The final family re-enactment then involves Maddin's brother Cameron, who in real life committed suicide, rationalizing this death calmly in
1089-523: A car accident. Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg , graduating in 1977 without a plan to become a filmmaker. That same year, Maddin's father died suddenly after a stroke , and Maddin married Martha Jane Waugh. Their daughter, Jilian, was born in 1978, and Maddin and Waugh divorced in 1979. After graduating, Maddin held a variety of odd jobs, including bank manager, house painter, and photo archivist. Maddin began to take film classes at
1210-663: A car accident. Fyodor, who is in love with Port-Huntley, has built prosthetic legs for her out of glass (and filled with beer), which she loves although she spurns Fyodor, leading to his drunken death. As the contest proceeds, things end tragically. The Saddest Music in the World won a number of awards, including three Genie Awards (Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Achievement in Editing, and Best Achievement in Music, Original Score) and Maddin
1331-485: A child), whose domineering mother runs a lighthouse orphanage on an island where she and her husband perform scientific experiments upon the children in an effort to extend her youth. Brand Upon the Brain! was shot as a silent film, and premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was accompanied by a live orchestra, singer, an interlocutor (in the style of Japanese benshi ), and Foley artists. The film
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#17328906694171452-401: A combination of the 100 short films, "connected together into a paranormally eerie, semi-coherent whole." The number of films will ensure "hundreds of billions of unique permutations". Maddin and Galen Johnson also co-directed and shot, concurrently, a feature film titled The Forbidden Room , with the same writers. Although often misreported as the same project, The Forbidden Room "is
1573-785: A commission to celebrate the opening of the Bell Lightbox cultural centre in Toronto, producing an installation series titled Hauntings based on the concept of reimagining lost films from the silent film era that are known to have existed or been planned by influential filmmakers, but either destroyed or not produced. In December 2010, Maddin married the L.A. film critic Kim Morgan, and they separated in 2014. Maddin shot his tenth feature film, Keyhole (2011), digitally rather than his usual method of shooting on sixteen-millimetre or Super-8. Filming began in Winnipeg on July 6, 2010. The film screened at
1694-413: A discussion with Maddin's "Mother". A limited theatrical release of My Winnipeg involved live narrators, including Maddin himself, Udo Kier and "scream queen" Barbara Steele . The DVD release of My Winnipeg by Seville Pictures, in addition to the feature film, contains a music video titled "Winnipeg" by Andy Smetanka (images) and Paul Copoe (music). The DVD also contains some documentary footage of
1815-515: A dramatic suicide). Grigorss, who is in love with Klara, begins to work for Count Knotkers, who also harbours love for Grigorss' mother. Klara convinces Grigorss to duel the Count, resulting in the death of his mother, Klara's father, Klara, and finally Grigorss himself. Careful premiered at the New York Film Festival and, although it was not a commercial success elsewhere, "single-handedly saved
1936-401: A faked Nazi invasion of the city was mounted during World War II to promote the sale of war bonds). My Winnipeg received the award for Best Canadian Feature Film from the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, Best Documentary from the 2008 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards, Best Canadian Film from the 2008 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, and Best Experimental Documentary from
2057-663: A feature film with its own separate story and stars" while " Seances will be an interactive Internet project." The Forbidden Room is Maddin's eleventh feature film, with its world premiere in January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival . Maddin's next feature film, The Green Fog (2017), premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 16, 2017. The film features a score by composer Jacob Garchik, performed by Kronos Quartet , and
2178-403: A feature-length film. Maddin then wrote and shot The Heart of the World (2000) in the style of Russian constructivism , taking the commission at its literal face value, as a call to produce a propaganda film. The plot of The Heart of the World concerns two brothers, Osip and Nikolai, who compete for the love of the same woman: Anna, a state scientist studying Earth's core. Anna discovers that
2299-484: A fey opera singer". The singer is killed and the daughter is forced to marry a dike-builder who is also killed. A local alchemist then constructs an automaton copy of the latter, which the daughter succeeds in having implanted with two hearts (of both her opera singer love and her dike-builder husband) and a lever that switches control of the mechanical body between the two hearts. The movie was to feature Christopher Lee and Leni Riefenstahl , but Telefilm Canada "declared
2420-480: A film that deals with a familiar story, but looks like no other." Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary won first prize (Prague D'Or) at the 2002 Golden Prague Television Festival, two 2002 Gemini Awards for Best Canadian Performing Arts Show and Best Direction, and a 2002 International Emmy for Best Performing Arts. Originally a television feature, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary was released theatrically in 2003. Maddin's next feature, The Saddest Music in
2541-558: A filmmaker and established a reputation outside of Canada, Maddin began work on a series of feature films produced on larger budgets and more traditional production schedules and processes. His second feature, Archangel (1990), fictionalizes in a general sense historical conflict related to the Bolshevik Revolution occurring in the Arkhangelsk (Archangel) region of Russia, a basic concept presented to Maddin by John Harvie. Boles,
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#17328906694172662-479: A five-tier ratings system, but there are occasions when this just doesn't suffice. Once in a blue moon, you encounter a film so extraordinary that it's not enough to award the icon of a woman standing, hands raised in applause. You really need her to be levitating several feet above her armchair, body racked with the transcendental ecstasies of Saint Teresa. Such a film is My Winnipeg, by Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin. The Hollywood Reporter stated that "'Docu-fantasia'
2783-620: A gangster who leads his gang to break into his former home and odysseys through the haunted house (in a plot inspired by Homer's Odyssey ), searching room-by-room to find his wife Hyacinth Isabella Rossellini . The film was cowritten by Maddin and Toles and also stars Udo Kier , Brooke Palsson , David Wontner , Louis Negin , and Kevin McDonald from the comedy troupe Kids in the Hall . Also in 2011, Maddin participated in Performa 11 wi th Tales from
2904-523: A garbage dump." Maddin was ordered by the producers to shoot in colour, and so Careful became Maddin's first colour film, shot on 16 mm film with a budget of CA$ 1.1 million (equivalent to CA$ 2,057,262 in 2023). the colour style of the film emulated the two colour Technicolor movies of the early 1930s. Kyle McCulloch again starred, alongside other Maddin regulars such as Brent Neale and Ross McMillan. At one point, Martin Scorsese had agreed to act in
3025-471: A host of installation art projects. A number of Maddin's recent films began as or developed from installation art projects, and his books also relate to his film work. Maddin is known for his fascination with lost Silent-era films and for incorporating their aesthetics into his own work. Maddin has been the subject of much critical praise and academic attention, including two books of interviews with Maddin and two book-length academic studies of his work. Maddin
3146-550: A large spoon—since the dead father awakens, the son cannot finish eating him and must instead pack his body away into a trunk in the family's attic. Although Maddin did not feel that the film's initial, Winnipeg premiere had gone well, John Paizs convinced him to submit the film to the Toronto Film Festival and the festival accepted the film. At the festival Maddin met Atom Egoyan , Jeremy Podeswa , Norman Jewison , and began to form connections with Canadian filmmakers across
3267-546: A makeshift film studio (Lil appears in the film briefly as a "bedside vigil-sitter in one quick shot [taken] just a couple of days before she died" at the age of 85. After Maddin's mother sold the house/studio, Maddin completed the remaining shots of the film at various locations, including his own home, over a period of eighteen months. Maddin received a grant from the Manitoba Arts Council for CA$ 20,000 (equivalent to CA$ 44,129 in 2023), and often cites that figure as
3388-403: A neverending cliffhanger." Each six-minute film is viewed through a peephole and together present a fictionalised autobiography, whose main character (named "Guy Maddin") is embroiled in illegal abortion, murderous intrigue, sexual rivalry, and hockey. The installation was also exhibited at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto from March 22 to May 25, 2003. A literary screenplay for
3509-493: A recent period of male rivalry and noticed that he found himself "quite often forgetting the object of jealousy" and instead becoming "possessive of my rival". The film was originally titled Gimli Saga after the amateur history book produced locally by various Icelandic members of the community of Gimli (Maddin himself is Icelandic by ancestry). Maddin's aunt Lil had recently retired from hairdressing, and allowed Maddin to use her beauty salon (also Maddin's childhood home) as
3630-611: A seating capacity of approximately 9,500. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Winnipeg Arena was considered to be among the finest facilities in the western half of North America. The Winnipeg Arena's grand opening occurred in conjunction with the first hockey game played on October 18, 1955, a Western Hockey League minor pro game between the Winnipeg Warriors and the Calgary Stampeders . The ceremonial opening face-off
3751-448: A series of fictional episodes and an overall story trajectory concerning the author-narrator-character "Guy Maddin" and his desire to produce the film as a way to finally leave/escape the city of Winnipeg. "Guy Maddin" is played by Darcy Fehr but voiced by Maddin himself (in narration): Fehr appears groggily trying to rouse himself from sleep aboard a jostling train as Maddin wonders aloud "What if?" What if he were able to actually rouse from
My Winnipeg - Misplaced Pages Continue
3872-524: A sexual encounter. Maddin announces that this, like "everything that happens in [Winnipeg] is a euphemism." The film then recounts the city's history of Spiritualism , including a visit by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1923. The film next examines Winnipeg architectural landmarks, including the Eaton's building and the Winnipeg Arena , both of which are demolished (while the arena is being destroyed, Maddin becomes
3993-522: A short film by manipulating his family's home movies. Maddin expanded the approach of his Hauntings installation into another film/installation project, Seances , which combines "a film shoot, an experience and an installation, which will subsequently become an interactive work". Maddin started shooting Seances in 2012 in Paris, France at the Centre Georges Pompidou and continued shooting at
4114-469: A struggling art-house cinema in Missoula, Montana" where "sell-out crowds had filled the house twice every night for two weeks". For his next feature film, written by Toles, Maddin attempted to make an operetta called The Dikemaster's Daughter "set in a nineteenth-century Holland populated almost entirely by opera singers and dike-building navvies" about "a short-lived romance between the titular daughter and
4235-897: A transvestite, homicidal nurse in The International Style (1983). Maddin drew early inspiration from the films of John Paizs, as well as experimental shorts by Stephen Snyder. Other early influences included L'Age d'Or by Luis Buñuel (in collaboration with Salvador Dalí ) and Eraserhead by David Lynch . Maddin has stated that these films, along with the work of Paizs and Snyder, "were movies that were primitive in many respects. They were low budget, they used nonactors or nonstars, they used atmospheres and ideas, and were unbelievably honest, frank, and, therefore, exciting to me. They made moviemaking seem possible to me." Maddin also met film professor George Toles, who became Maddin's cowriter on many of his future films. Maddin's core group of friends from this period, who played various roles in
4356-557: A variety of films, from Minority Report to The Seven Samurai , an article on the making of Maddin's feature The Saddest Music in the World , and writing on Bollywood melodramas. The book contains four film treatments, for the short films The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts Towards Infinity , Maldoror:Tygers , and the feature film Careful . The longest treatment is for an unmade film called The Child Without Qualities , an autobiographical work that reads like an experimental short story. This unfinished short film's title alludes to
4477-574: A verbal choreography performed by lovers who manipulate each other through complicated displays of insincere self-loathing. Participants enter the Limbo in hopes of restructuring the unspoken terms of their relationship." Guy Maddin also released a book titled My Winnipeg (Coach House Books, 2009). Maddin's book contains the film's narration as a main text surrounded by annotations, including outtakes, marginal notes and digressions, production stills, family photos, and miscellaneous material. The book contains
4598-420: A window ledge, and threatens to jump." His mother, in the next window, convinces him to live. Maddin's mother is noted as the star of the show. The film recounts the conditions of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike , a real-world event with international significance, before returning to the family re-enactments, including Mother's suspicion of Janet Maddin, who hit a deer on the highway but is accused of covering up
4719-552: A woman's groin and associates it with his mother. Maddin also notes the apocryphal aboriginal myth of a secret "Forks beneath the Forks", an underground river system below the aboveground river system –the superimposition of these two sets of rivers has imbued the site and Winnipeg itself with magical/magnetic/sexual energy. Maddin also notes that Winnipeg is the geographical centre of North America, and thus these secret rivers are "the Heart of
4840-457: A young man whose father dies but continues to visit his family and disapprove of his son's life. Its budget is estimated at CA$ 5,000 (equivalent to CA$ 12,468 in 2023). Maddin began shooting The Dead Father in 1982 and finished the film in 1985. Spurred by the work of Snyder and Paizs, and together with Harvie and Handford, Maddin decided to begin making films and founded a film company called "Extra Large Productions" (they first decided on
4961-421: Is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer , and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist , from Winnipeg , Manitoba . Since completing his first film in 1985, Maddin has become one of Canada's most well-known and celebrated filmmakers. Maddin has directed twelve feature films and numerous short films, in addition to publishing three books and creating
My Winnipeg - Misplaced Pages Continue
5082-446: Is a collage-film, "a scene-by-scene reimagining of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo comprised entirely of Bay Area film footage from a variety of sources — '50s noir, experimental films, '70s prime-time TV, and more." Guy Maddin has cultivated a career as an installation artist alongside his film-making career. Maddin's installations generally include short films screened in unusual fashions, and tend to draw on both his autobiography and on
5203-515: Is also an author, and has published three books, two of which are literary companions to his feature films. Guy Maddin's first book (followed the same year by Cowards Bend the Knee ) contains selected "journalism, treatments for films made and unmade and [. . .] selection[s] from the director's [. . .] personal journals" and also "candid photos and unpublished storyboards". The book is introduced by film critic Mark Peranson and published by Coach House Books . Maddin's journalism features reviews of
5324-433: Is too mild a label for 'My Winnipeg,' Guy Maddin's simultaneously heartfelt and mocking ode to the hometown he describes as the coldest, most soporific city on Earth," also calling the film "Hilarious for those on Maddin's mad wavelength and more varied than his strictly fictional features." J. Hoberman called the film "Maddin's best filmmaking since the nono-dissimilar confessional bargain-basement phantasmagoia, Cowards Bend
5445-570: The Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. Approximately 9,800 spectators packed the arena to witness the two teams battle to a 4–4 draw. A new era for the Winnipeg Arena began in the fall of 1972 when the city's new professional hockey team, the Winnipeg Jets , entered the upstart WHA. Their on-ice success during the 1970s brought three WHA championship banners to the rafters of
5566-698: The Golden Boy statue atop the provincial legislative building , the Paddle Wheel restaurant, the Hudson's Bay department store , and the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame , make appearances in distorted versions of themselves, as does the Sherbrook Pool. The film then recalls If Day (an actual historical event when a faked Nazi invasion of the city was mounted during World War II to promote the sale of war bonds), and
5687-491: The University of Manitoba . There, Maddin met film professor Stephen Snyder, who held regular film screenings of titles from the school's film library at his home. Maddin attended, as did some early collaborators, including his friend John Boles Harvie, the future star of Maddin's first film, and filmmaker John Paizs . Maddin appeared as an actor in two of Paizs' short films, as a student in Oak, Ivy, and Other Dead Elms (1982) and as
5808-457: The privately owned MTS Centre, now known as Canada Life Centre , in 2004 meant the end for the Winnipeg Arena. The arena's last official event was an American Hockey League game between the Manitoba Moose and Utah Grizzlies played before a capacity crowd on November 4, 2004. Several former Jets players, including Bobby Hull and Teemu Selänne , were present for a special ceremony as
5929-536: The 1980s and 1990s. This tradition continued with the revived Jets team in 2011. Financial troubles forced the Jets to leave Winnipeg in 1996. It was a big blow for the city, but the arena was not without a tenant for long, as the Manitoba Moose of the International Hockey League moved in the next season. Renovations once again took place, with the addition of club seats and a new club lounge in place of
6050-506: The 1980–1981 season, was moved to Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario . During the 1980s, a tradition known as the " White Out " was initiated in which boisterous and sometimes raucous fans dressed in all-white during playoff games to create an intimidating environment for opposing teams. This led to the Winnipeg Arena's reputation as one of the loudest sports venues in North America during
6171-700: The 2009 International Urban Film Festival, Tehran. In 2007, Maddin also became the first artist-curator of the UCLA Film and Television Archive . Maddin soon received two other career awards, the Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the 2009 Provincetown International Film Festival and the 2010 Canada Council for the Arts Bell Award in Video Art for lifetime achievement in the field. Maddin then returned to installation art with
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#17328906694176292-757: The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2011 Whistler Film Festival , where it won the Best Canadian Film Award. In 2012, Keyhole screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival, the Independent Film Festival of Boston , the Wisconsin Film Festival , Fantasporto , and the Berlin International Film Festival . The film was released theatrically in 2012. Keyhole stars Jason Patric as Ulysses Pick,
6413-539: The Department of English at Concordia University, has published an academic monograph on My Winnipeg . This book-length work, Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg (U of Toronto P, 2010), contextualizes the film in relation to avant-garde literature and art by drawing on media and cultural theory. In Wershler's words, I argue that Maddin's use of techniques and media falls outside of the normal repertoire of contemporary cinema, which requires us to re-examine what we think we know about
6534-504: The Games, the portrait of the Queen was removed to make room for banners. It was placed in storage and never returned to the rafters. The arena also played host to charity fundraising hockey games such as Schmockey Night as well as figure skating events like Stars On Ice , Ice Capades , and Disney on Ice . The local Shiners Khartoum Temple also hosted the annual Shrine Circus there. The arena
6655-561: The Gimli Hospital: Reframed , an ambitious live performance that reframes the original 1988 film. Maddin and the composer Matthew Patton gathered a group of musicians to compose and perform the new score which centered on Icelandic musician Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir . In 2012, Maddin produced another installation for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Only Dream Things , for which he recreated his childhood bedroom and produced
6776-509: The Heart" of the continent and of Canada. Maddin regales the viewer with one of the film's many suspect historical "facts" about Winnipeg: "the Canadian Pacific Railway used to sponsor an annual treasure hunt [that] required our citizens to wander our city in a day-long combing of the streets and neighbourhoods. First prize was a one-way ticket on the next train out of town." No winners in a hundred years could bring themselves to leave
6897-573: The Ice Nymphs (1997), his second in colour and his first shot in 35 mm , on a budget of CA$ 1.5 million (equivalent to CA$ 2,606,748 in 2023). Set in the fictional land of Mandragora, where the sun does not set, a newly released convict returns to his family's ostrich farm and is embroiled in a host of romantic complications involving a heavy-breasted statue of Venus. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs featured Shelley Duvall and Frank Gorshin ; The film's star, Nigel Whitmey , had his name removed from
7018-543: The Knee ." Roger Ebert named My Winnipeg the tenth best film of the decade. The film appeared on several other critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. In 2015, the Toronto International Film Festival placed My Winnipeg in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time . Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg by Darren Wershler Darren Wershler , a Canadian avant-garde poet, critic, and assistant professor in
7139-595: The Maroons, a Winnipeg hockey team). Maddin has three older siblings: Ross (b. 1944), Cameron (1946–63), and Janet (b. 1949). Maddin attended Winnipeg public schools : the Greenway School (elementary school), General Wolfe (junior high school), and the Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute (high school). In February 1963, his brother Cameron killed himself on the grave of his girlfriend, who had died in
7260-472: The North End ice level seats. The Moose would be the arena's last tenant. The arena found itself back in the international spotlight when it hosted the 1999 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships . The tournament was a major success, setting a new attendance record, with 170,000 fans taking in the games. With the support of lively crowds reminiscent of the former Jets days, the host Canadian team advanced to
7381-581: The Phi Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The film shoots themselves were presented as art installation projects, during which Maddin, along with the cast and crew, held a "séance" during which Maddin "invite[d] the spirit of a lost photoplay to possess them". Seances will be launched online by the National Film Board of Canada in 2015, in an interactive web project that allows users to randomly generate
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#17328906694177502-531: The Toronto Film Festival, and in 1991 was awarded Best Experimental Film by the National Society of Film Critics. Maddin's third feature, Careful (1992), was styled after another early cinema genre, the German mountain picture (or Bergfilm ) — a surprising choice, given that (as filmmaker Caelum Vatnsdal has noted), "Winnipeg's highest peak is, in fact, an artificial hill that had been created by laying sod over
7623-522: The World (2003) was budgeted at $ 3.8-million (a large budget in Canadian terms) and shot over 24 days. The film was Maddin's first collaboration with Isabella Rossellini , who subsequently appeared in a number of Maddin's films, and cocreated a film with him about her father Roberto Rossellini . The film also starred Mark McKinney (of the comedy troupe Kids in the Hall ), Maria de Medeiros , David Fox , and Ross McMillan . Maddin and cowriter Toles based
7744-506: The World marked the beginning of a productive period for Maddin, who produced five feature films within the following eight years. Maddin's next feature deepened but also ended his collaboration with Deco Dawson, who was credited as "Editor and Associate Director" on Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002). Maddin and Dawson had a falling out in the wake of the production and have not worked together again (Dawson nevertheless spoke kindly of Maddin's following feature, The Saddest Music in
7865-544: The World . Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary was budgeted at $ 1.7-million and produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a dance film documenting a performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet adapting Bram Stoker 's novel Dracula . Maddin elected to shoot the dance film in a fashion uncommon for such films, through close-ups and using jump cuts. Maddin also stayed close to
7986-608: The arena and made the Jets the pride of the city and province. In 1979, the Jets were one of four teams admitted into the National Hockey League following the demise of the WHA , which necessitated a major expansion to the arena to meet the NHL's minimum capacity. The seating capacity was expanded to 15,565, mostly through the construction of upper decks on the east and west sides. The construction of these upper decks created an overhang above
8107-462: The arena home until 1961, when the club was sold and relocated. Six years later, the arena found a new tenant in the Winnipeg Jets junior hockey club when it began play in the new Western Hockey League . The club would later be renamed the Monarchs and played at the arena until 1977. On September 6, 1972, the Winnipeg Arena found itself in the international spotlight when it hosted the third game of
8228-620: The attention of Ben Barenholtz , who had successfully distributed other cult films such as the John Waters film Pink Flamingos and David Lynch's debut feature Eraserhead . Tales from the Gimli Hospital consequently succeeded on the festival circuit and screened for a full year as a midnight movie at a theatre in New York's Greenwich Village . Maddin received a Genie award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Having proven himself as
8349-548: The banners hanging from the rafters were lowered before the game. Most of the memorabilia from the arena including the seats and the trough from the men's washroom were auctioned off to the public prior to the demolition. The Winnipeg Arena sat vacant until 2006, at which time the City of Winnipeg took on the $ 1.45 million expense of demolishing the arena. After the building was gutted, final demolition took place on March 26, 2006. On that morning, hundreds of hockey fans gathered to watch
8470-422: The cast and crew, held a séance "invit[ing] the spirit of a lost photoplay to possess them". The cameras used to record the shoots also live-streams their video online. Other writers on the project include Evan Johnson , Robert Kotyk, film critic Kim Morgan, and US poet John Ashbery . In 2015, the Maddin and National Film Board of Canada will release " Seances [as] an interactive Internet project". Guy Maddin
8591-545: The city after coming to know the city so closely over the course of the treasure hunt. Maddin then posits an alternative explanation for Winnipeggers never leaving Winnipeg: sleepiness. He notes that Winnipeg is the sleepwalking capital of the world, with ten times the normal rate of sleepwalking, and that everyone in Winnipeg carries around the keys to their former homes in case they return while asleep. Winnipeg by-laws require that sleepwalkers be allowed to sleep in their old homes by
8712-552: The completion of the MTS Centre in November 2004 and was later demolished. A retail and commercial complex occupies the site today. Construction on a new facility to replace Winnipeg's obsolete Shea's Amphitheatre began in October 1954. Situated between Winnipeg Stadium and Polo Park , the new arena opened its doors for the 1955–56 hockey season and, in its original configuration, had
8833-428: The death of her father. Guy meanwhile falls in love with the ghost of his dead lover, not recognizing her, and competes with his own father for her affection. Maddin based the film's premise loosely on the story The Hands of Ida and Euripedes's play Medea . Critic J. Hoberman of The Village Voice called the film "Maddin's masterpiece", noting that the film "not only plays like a dream but feels like one". Maddin
8954-469: The documentary genre also marks the film as distinct from the work historically advanced by the National Film Board of Canada . Maddin has called My Winnipeg a "docu-fantasia" and Wershler similarly points out that the film's "truth" lies somewhere "in the irresolvable tension created by the gap between documentary and melodrama". Guy Maddin Guy Maddin CM OM (born February 28, 1956)
9075-430: The documentary genre and even 'film' itself. Through an exploration of the film's major thematic concerns – memory, the cultural archive, and how people and objects circulate through the space of the city – I contend that My Winnipeg is intriguing because it is psychologically and affectively true without being historically accurate. In the context of its Canadian production, My Winnipeg 's difference from
9196-431: The dog Spanky from the film. The book also includes an interview with Maddin's mother Herdis, conducted by Ann Savage , and an interview with Maddin conducted by Michael Ondaatje . Maddin's publisher offers the book with or without a DVD of the film, distributed by Seville Pictures. My Winnipeg received consistent critical praise. As of July 9, 2015, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 94% of critics gave
9317-454: The film and Maddin's work in general, that "For me, Maddin seems to penetrate to the hidden layers beneath the surface of the movies, revealing a surrealistic underworld of fears, fantasies and obsessions." Maddin's next feature stemmed from a commission to produce a documentary film about his hometown of Winnipeg, for which Maddin's producer directed "Don't give me the frozen hellhole everyone knows that Winnipeg is." Taking what he described as
9438-410: The film on an original screenplay written by Booker Prize -winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro , from which they kept "the title, the premise and the contest – to determine which country's music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote. The action of The Saddest Music in the World centres around a contest run by Beer Baroness Lady Port-Huntley (Rossellini) to discover which country has the saddest music in
9559-464: The film owes much to the work of the Surrealists , with Maddin citing Luis Buñuel and Man Ray as its main influences. Critics routinely cite, as an example of Maddin's dream-like tone, the climactic scene of the film, where the son attempts to resolve his relationship with his dead father by uncovering his corpse (hidden to sleep at night in some nearby brush) and attempting to devour his father using
9680-446: The film positive reviews, based on 87 reviews. Metacritic reported "universal acclaim" based on 24 critics (scored 84 out of 100). Critic Roger Ebert gave the film a perfect 4/4 star rating, stating of Maddin's work generally that "If you love movies in the very sinews of your imagination, you should experience the work of Guy Maddin." Jonathan Romney began his review by stating that This reviews section, you'll have noticed, operates
9801-511: The film was also published by the gallery, and the short films were collected together as a feature film (released theatrically and to DVD). Maddin was commissioned to produce an installation for the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival 's Bell Lightbox , a cultural centre and skyscraper, and configured eleven screens to show a series of original short films. The films consisted of reimagined "lost" films by famous directors that have been lost, destroyed or unrealized. Maddin stated in
9922-531: The film's budget, although he has also estimated the actual budget to have been between CA$ 14,000 and CA$ 30,000. Although Tales from the Gimli Hospital upset some of the residents of Gimli, who believed that the film made light of the historical smallpox epidemic that ravaged the community, and was rejected by the Toronto Film Festival , it nevertheless became a cult success and established Maddin's reputation in independent film circles. The film garnered
10043-541: The film's credits after Maddin chose to remove Whitmey's voice from the film and replace it with Ross McMillan's. As seen in Noam Gonick 's documentary Waiting for Twilight , Maddin was dissatisfied with the film-making process due to such creative interference from his producers, saying "just close the mausoleum lid on me" since he was possibly done making films. Maddin then entered a relatively "fallow period" although he continued to make short films, music videos (including
10164-555: The film's narration as a main text surrounded by annotations, including outtakes, marginal notes and digressions, production stills, family photos, and miscellaneous material. The book contains a "Winnipeg Map" by artist Marcel Dzama featuring such fictional attractions as "The Giant Squid of the Red [River]", various poster designs for the film, and short articles about working with Maddin by Andy Smetanka, Darcy Fehr , and Caelum Vatnsdal. Maddin also includes an angry e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, collages and notebooks pages, and an X-ray of
10285-512: The film's screening at the Royal Cinema in Toronto (on June 18, 2008), where it was narrated live by Maddin. The DVD also contains three of Maddin's short films: Spanky: To the Pier and Back , Berlin and Odin's Shield Maiden . The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2015. Maddin also released a book titled My Winnipeg (Coach House Books, 2009). Maddin's book contains
10406-596: The film, as Count Knotkers, but bowed out to complete Cape Fear . Maddin pursued casting hockey star Bobby Hull , but ended up casting Paul Cox . Careful, also cowritten by George Toles, is set in the mountain town of Tolzbad, where the townspeople are forced to repress their behaviour pathologically, since the slightest expression of emotion can trigger a devastating avalanche. Brothers Grigorss (McCulloch) and Johann (Neale) seem secure of bright futures as butlers, but Johann becomes incestuously obsessed with their widowed mother (driving him away from his fiancé and towards
10527-454: The film. Most of the text is Maddin's treatment for the film, which follows the same plot. In the words of Baerwaldt, the story is a fictional "autobiography [that] features a diabolical plot surrounding a coward on a mission [named Guy Maddin] that resembles a cycle of dark spectacles dressed up as, among other things, lewd seduction, Canadian hockey, murder, amputations, hair design, general mayhem, fetish attractions and heartfelt loss." In
10648-537: The gold medal game, but lost to Russia in overtime. Aside from hockey, the Winnipeg Arena was often used for basketball , including home games for the Winnipeg Thunder , an independent professional team in the early 1990s; the inaugural Naismith Cup between the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies on October 21, 1995; and 1999 Pan American Games basketball and volleyball tournaments. In preparation for
10769-480: The heart of the world is in danger of a fatal heart attack (which would mean the end of the world), and the brothers compete amongst the public panic. Nikolai is a mortician and tries to impress Anna with assembly-line embalming, while Osip is an actor playing Christ in the Passion Play and tries to impress Anna through his suffering. Anna is instead seduced by an evil capitalist, but has a change of heart and strangles
10890-439: The history of cinema. Maddin was commissioned by The Power Plant gallery in Toronto and, in an installation curated by Philip Monk, produced a series of ten short films. The exhibition premiered at the 42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam from January 22 to February 2, 2003, where the catalogue described it as "A firstofitskind, tenpart peephole installation jampacked with enough kinetically photographed action to seem like
11011-405: The inevitable social/economic collapse and/or nuclear holocaust ". The show became a cult hit in Winnipeg and excerpts were re-released on the compilation DVD Winnipeg Babysitter . Maddin plays a masked character on the show named "Concerned Citizen Stan". Maddin's first short film (as director, writer, producer, and cinematographer) was The Dead Father , a 25-minute black-and-white film about
11132-718: The interview with Enright, Maddin notes that the book's genesis began with Maddin's intention to clarify the narrative of his films, since "it is a source of continuing frustration that people would say --- and it was always a compliment --- we really like your films, they're so non-narrative . So I thought, damnit, I'm going to get a story that people are going to recognize, something that has legs. I started reading Greek tragedy, Electra , Medea and stuff like that, and basically I just took some premises from these super-durable stories. The things I end up layering around these rock-solid premises are invariably pure autobiography [. . .] once I slipped away what little remained of Euripides, what
11253-500: The last person to urinate in its washroom). Maddin imagines the arena's salvation by the "Black Tuesdays", a fictional team of hockey heroes "in their 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond", then re-enacts a family scene where Mother is harassed to cook a meal. The film recounts a racetrack fire that drove horses to perish in the Red River ;– the horse heads reappear, ghostly, each winter, frozen in the ice. Further Winnipeg landmarks, including
11374-681: The lower deck seating areas, obstructing views according to many spectators. That same year, a painting of Queen Elizabeth II was commissioned for the arena by Francis Lawrence Jobin , the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba . The painting measured 5 by 7 metres (16 by 23 ft) (one of the largest ever painted of the Queen) and hung from the arena's rafters. A White Way sign centre-hung scoreboard with colour matrix animation boards replaced an American Sign and Indicator centre-hung scoreboard in 1985. The American Sign and Indicator scoreboard, in use since
11495-447: The name "Jumbo Productions" and went to get a jumbo pizza to celebrate, but changed the name when the pizzeria in Gimli, Manitoba, only served "extra large" pizzas). Maddin cast John Harvie in the lead role as the son, and University of Manitoba medical professor Dr. Dan P. Snidal as the dead father. The Dead Father (1985) was shot in black-and-white on sixteen-millimetre film. The style of
11616-402: The national scene. Maddin next began work on his feature film debut, Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), also shot in black-and-white on sixteen-millimetre film. Kyle McCulloch starred in the film as Einar, a lonely fisherman who contracts smallpox and begins to compete with another patient, Gunnar (played by Michael Gottli) for the attention of the young nurses. Maddin had himself endured
11737-418: The new tenants. Maddin rents his own childhood home at 800 Ellice Avenue for a month, hiring actors to play his family (including Ann Savage as his mother) in order to recreate scenes from his childhood memories, excluding his father and himself. The "family" gathers to watch the television show LedgeMan , a fictional drama in which "the same oversensitive man takes something said the wrong way, climbs out on
11858-432: The plutocrat, then slides down into the heart of the world, where she manages to save the world from destruction by transforming into cinema itself, the world's "new and better heart — Kino!" The Heart of the World won a 2001 Genie Award for Best Short, and the 2001 U.S. National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Experimental Film (the same award Maddin had won in 1991 for Archangel ). The success of The Heart of
11979-582: The press that "I've been literally haunted by the idea that there are these really intriguing titles by some of my favourite filmmakers that I'd never get to see [... and] I told myself years ago that the only way I'd get to see any version of these is if I made the adaptation myself." The installation was also exhibited at Winnipeg's Platform Gallery from September 2 to October 2, 2011, for the WNDX Festival of Moving Image and at Concordia University's FOFA (Faculty of Fine Arts) Gallery from June 1–10, 2012. For
12100-568: The production of his early film projects, were known as "the Drones" and included Harvie, Ian Handford, and Kyle McCulloch (now a writer for South Park ). Maddin joined the Winnipeg Film Group around this time, and also became friends with producer Greg Klymkiw, with whom he began making a cable access television show, Survival (c. 1985–87). Survival was a satirical talk show centred around, as its opening credits noted, how "we must survive
12221-431: The project a 'lateral move'" for Maddin and the movie could not secure enough funding, so was aborted. Maddin consequently flirted with the idea of moving to Los Angeles to become a director-for-hire. He met with Claudia Lewis, who worked for Fox Searchlight , but Maddin found himself dispirited with the projects he was offered: "I remember one was a love story set in a TB sanatorium. The only thing odd or bizarre about it
12342-467: The recreation of pivotal scenes from his memories of youth. Along the way, Maddin documents facts, rumours, and fabricated myths about Winnipeg, including the demolition of the Winnipeg hockey arena (during the period after the sale of the Winnipeg Jets had left the city without a national hockey team), an epidemic of sleepwalking, the ghosts of frozen horse heads returning every winter when the rivers freeze over, and If Day (an actual historical event when
12463-412: The second being Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) and My Winnipeg (2007). Cowards Bend the Knee concerns the murderous exploits of a young "Guy Maddin" (played by Darcy Fehr ), a hockey player whose forgets his beloved as she dies through complications during an illegal abortion. Guy becomes entwined in a love affair with the daughter of the abortionist, who compels him to murder her mother to revenge
12584-415: The series of film "chapters" that collectively make up the feature film. The book contains a foreword by Wayne Baerwaldt (then-Director of The Power Plant) and an introduction by Philip Monk, who also edited the book and curated Maddin's installation. The main text is followed by an interview with Guy Maddin conducted by Robert Enright . The book also contains stills from the film and a list of credits for
12705-631: The short film Odilon Redon, or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (which was commissioned by the BBC and won a Special Jury Citation at the Toronto International Film festival). In 1995, Maddin also became the youngest recipient ever of the Telluride Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award. Maddin's fourth feature, also scripted by Toles and inspired by the novel Pan by Knut Hamsun , ended up being Twilight of
12826-476: The sleepy life he lives in Winnipeg and escape? Maddin decides that the only possible escape would be to "film my way out", thus motivating the creation of the "docu-fantasia" already underway. Maddin then describes Winnipeg in general terms, introducing it to the viewer, noting primarily its location at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, a place known as " the Forks ". Maddin equates this Y-like junction to
12947-434: The source material of Stoker's novel, emphasizing the xenophobia in the reactions of the main characters to Dracula (played by Zhang Wei-Qiang in Maddin's film). The resulting film was greeted with critical acclaim, with an 84% average rating on Metacritic and an 85% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes . Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of 4, writing that "so many films are more or less alike that it's jolting to see
13068-399: The title of Robert Musil 's unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities . Guy Maddin wrote a lengthy treatment for the feature film Cowards Bend the Knee , which he published as a book through The Power Plant, the public art gallery in Toronto that commissioned the installation art show that both served as Maddin's first major foray as an installation artist and for which Maddin produced
13189-542: The video for the song "It's a Wonderful Life" by Sparklehorse ), and advertisements. During his break from making feature films, Maddin began teaching film classes at the University of Manitoba, where he met and encouraged the younger filmmaker Deco Dawson . After being impressed with Dawson's short films, Maddin hired Dawson to work on a short film for the Toronto International Film Festival — Maddin
13310-499: The world. Chester Kent (McKinney), a failed Broadway producer, returns home to Winnipeg and competes with his father Fyodor (Fox) and brother Roderick (McMillan) to win the contest and its $ 25,000 prize. It's discovered that Chester's girlfriend, Narcissa (de Medeiros) was Roderick's wife but forgot this due to amnesia resulting from the death of their son (Roderick keeps his son's heart in a jar that travels with him). Chester reunites with Port-Huntley, his former lover, who lost her legs in
13431-650: Was also a frequent concert venue and a stop for professional wrestling tours such as the American Wrestling Association and WWE . In television and film, the arena was used for the made-for-television documentary Inside the Osmonds and the ESPN film A Season on the Brink . The arena, along with its multiple hockey tenants, was a major plot point in director Guy Maddin 's 2007 film My Winnipeg . The opening of
13552-696: Was also nominated for Best Achievement in Direction. Maddin received the same nomination from the Directors Guild of Canada, who awarded the film Outstanding Achievement in Production Design, Feature Film, and Maddin won the Film Discovery Jury Award for Best Director at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. While in pre-production on The Saddest Music in the World , Maddin directed Cowards Bend the Knee (2003), shooting entirely on Super-8mm film with
13673-467: Was appointed to the Order of Canada , the country's highest civilian honour, in 2012. Maddin first served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University 's Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies in 2015. Until then, he lived in Winnipeg. Guy Maddin was born on February 28, 1956, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Herdis Maddin (a hairdresser) and Charles "Chas" Maddin (grain clerk and general manager of
13794-483: Was commissioned by the Documentary Channel, and originally titled Love Me, Love My Winnipeg . Maddin's producer directed "Don't give me the frozen hellhole everyone knows that Winnipeg is", so Maddin cast Darcy Fehr in the role of "Guy Maddin" and structured the documentary around a metafictional plot that mythologizes the city and Maddin's autobiography. Although ostensibly a documentary, My Winnipeg contains
13915-463: Was conducted by Warriors Hockey Club president J. D. Perrin Sr. before a sell-out crowd (including standing room) of 9,671, a then-record for the league. The following year, Perrin offered to purchase the arena and Winnipeg Stadium from Winnipeg Enterprises Corporation . In keeping with the tenor of the times, when public ownership was thought to be advantageous, the offer was rejected. The Warriors called
14036-490: Was left was some core sample of me." Maddin's book treatment is written in a highly literary fashion that is not typical of screen treatments, so that the text reads like a literary work rather than a blueprint for the film: "It is the night before the [Winnipeg] Maroons' first game against the Soviets. Meta and Guy lie in bed, in the midst of a particularly spectacular recital of what could be called THE LIMBO-DANCE OF SELF-PITY ---
14157-626: Was next approached by the Seattle-based not-for-profit film production company called The Film Company and offered a budget to make any film he wanted, with complete freedom as long as he shot it in Seattle with local actors. Maddin ended up producing Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), from a script cowritten by Toles, shooting the film over nine days and editing it over three months with an estimated budget of $ 40,000. The plot concerns "Guy Maddin" (played by Erik Steffen Maahs as an adult, and Sullivan Brown as
14278-400: Was one of a number of directors (including Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg ) commissioned to make four-minute short films that would screen prior to the various feature films at the 2000 festival. After hearing rumours that other directors were planning films with a small number of shots, Maddin decided that his film would instead contain over a hundred shots per minute, and enough plot for
14399-558: Was the city's premier ice hockey venue from 1955 to 2004 and is best remembered as the home of the first Winnipeg Jets franchise, which played in the World Hockey Association (WHA) from 1972 to 1979 and the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1979 to 1996. It was also home to junior and minor league teams such as the Manitoba Moose (1996–2004) and Winnipeg Warriors (1955–1961). The arena closed after
14520-526: Was the very off-putting sight of people horking up blood and phlegm into little paper cups, and these paper cups would accumulate in volume until there were moonlit paper cups of phlegm floating on a lake, and it was supposed to be very beautiful, but it was nauseating. I'm making it sound better than it was, actually." Maddin also directed the TV film The Hands of Ida (which he "later repudiated") and married Elise Moore in 1995 (the marriage ended in 1997), and directed
14641-544: Was toured across North America in a similar fashion, with a host of celebrity narrators including Crispin Glover and John Ashbery . The film's normal theatrical run featured narration by Isabella Rossellini . In 2006, Maddin was presented with two lifetime achievement awards, the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Manitoba Arts Council's Award of Distinction. Roger Ebert wrote, of
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