The language of cinema’s past lives on in the films of Guy Maddin, the renegade surrealist of Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose sixty-fifth birthday we’re celebrating with this tour through his singular filmography. Meticulously recreating the aesthetics of silent and expressionist cinema in order to stage delirious visions of his own dreams, fantasies, and obsessions, Maddin’s films are by turns hallucinatory, warped, unsettling, and hilarious. This selection of the wildly prolific auteur’s numerous shorts and features—including the demented Alpine melodrama CAREFUL, the autobiographical docu-fantasia MY WINNIPEG, and the epic “lost film” phantasmagoria THE FORBIDDEN ROOM—is a testament to cinema’s uncanny power to make manifest our deepest and darkest inner worlds.
This new conversation with director Guy Maddin and art critic Robert Enright was recorded in 2021.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2005 • Canada
Starring Isabella Rossellini
Guy Maddin’s centenary tribute to Roberto Rossellini stars the great neorealist filmmaker’s daughter, Isabella Rossellini.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2007 • Canada
The geographical dead center of North America and the beloved birthplace of Guy Maddin, Winnipeg is the frosty and mysterious star of Maddin’s “docu-fantasia.” A work of memory and imagination, the film burrows into what the director calls “the heart of the...
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2008 • Canada
Guy Maddin takes a shoreside walk with a pug named Spanky in this kinetic tribute to man’s best friend.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2009 • Canada
Starring Louis Negin
Legendary poet John Ashbery scripted this absurdist step-by-step guide to bathing, excerpted from Guy Maddin’s feature THE FORBIDDEN ROOM and restored to its original form as a stand-alone film.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2009 • Canada
This short Guy Maddin film tells the story of inventor Nihad Ademi, who harnesses the power of the aurora borealis in Winnipeg in 1939. Ademi uses this power to broadcast images of Canada to its own citizens from coast to coast, but in the process angers he...
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2012 • Canada
Made as part of an installation at the Winnipeg Art Gallery for its centennial in 2012, ONLY DREAM THINGS layers home movies from Guy Maddin’s youth into a haunting, deeply personal journey through memory and the unconscious.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2014 • Canada
Guy Maddin meditates on the mysteries and memories embedded within the folds of a seemingly ordinary hallway carpet.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2012 • Canada
Guy Maddin narrates a surreal animated ode to the Métis freedom fighter and founder of the province of Manitoba.
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2015 • Canada
Starring Luce Vigo, Udo Kier
An unrealized Jean Vigo film script flickers to life in a kaleidoscopic swirl featuring his daughter, Luce Vigo; Udo Kier; and dialogue by poet John Ashbery.
Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson • 2017 • United States
Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO has long exerted a hypnotic pull over viewers entranced by its vision of lost love and voyeuristic obsession. In THE GREEN FOG, Guy Maddin and codirectors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson off...
Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson • 2018 • Canada
Starring Adam Brooks, Jon’Nathon Stebbe, William Bond
Can you spot the crime scene? An unbroken nine-minute shot of an apartment-block exterior captures the oddball hive of activity unfolding on the balconies in this innovat...
Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson • 2020 • Canada
Starring Adam Brooks, Brent Neale, Stephanie Berrington
Guy Maddin deploys an explosion of expressionist effects to tell the story of a carnival mentalist who sets out to disprove genetics in order to marry his sister.
Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson • 2020 • Canada
Starring Isabella Rossellini, Tony Lamorte, Satina Loren
Isabella Rossellini plays Federico Fellini in this extravagant phantasmagoria made in celebration of the Italian master’s centenary.
