vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
MY WINNIPEG
Director: Guy Maddin
Cast: Ann Savage, Louis Negin, Darcy Fehr, Amy Stewart
Run Time: 80 minutes
Country: Canada
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: PG (Nudity)
Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/mywinnipeg
Winner of the Toronto-City Award for Best Feature Film at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival®, My Winnipeg is the latest work from iconoclastic and wholly unique filmmaker Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain!). Continuing in the freewheeling, genre-bending tradition that has made him one of Canada’s most consistently intriguing and internationally respected artists, Maddin’s documentary (or ‘docu-fantasia,” as he describes it) about his hometown seamlessly blends local myth with childhood trauma.
Maddin splits the film into three different strands. The first boasts overlapping, dream-like images of people on trains while the narration ponders why Winnipeggers seem so sleepy and why the city boasts the most sleepwalkers per capita of any city in the world. Maddin proffers a variety of explanations: myths, pseudo-scientific theories and probably pure conjecture. The second thread offers a whirlwind tour of key moments in the city’s history from well-known events like the Winnipeg General Strike and the loss of the Winnipeg Jets, to far more obscure scandals like the Golden Boy pageants and a racetrack tragedy that left numerous horses encased in ice for the duration of the winter. The third, and possibly the most memorable, strand features re-enactments of pivotal, sometimes traumatic, scenes from Maddin’s childhood.
As the film proceeds and the local and personal stories pile up, My Winnipeg morphs into a meditation on belief and truth, memory and myth. A deliriously layered provocation, My Winnipeg is outrageous, informative and wildly entertaining.
Voted one of Canada’s Top Ten films of 2007
“A multilayered journey through the hometown in his head, Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg is a vigorous caprice of fact and fiction.” – Eddie Cockrell, Variety
