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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 29th Jul 08
Format: Festival
Mood: Nostalgic
What:
BIFF - My Winnipeg
When:
Where:
BIFF Australian Cinematheque, GoMA
Book tickets:
Here
Breast milk! Betrayed! Wake up, Winnipegger! Even the titles that flash up during Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg are infectious. It's a kinda-sorta love-hate documentary about his hometown, populated by dreamers, lorded over by his all-powerful mother, and made mythical by an avalanche of surreal new facts.
(Did you know that the mayor once judged illicit man-pagents? That orange jellois called ‘Night Manna'? That Winnipeg residents must, by law, take inany sleepwalkers who arrive at their door?)
It's easy to reduce Maddin to his idiosyncrasies - like describing his previous festival favourite The Saddest Music In The World as"Isabella Rossellini, glass legs, filled with beer" - but that doesn't account for the emotion in movies. As he hires actors to recreate pivotal childhood anecdotes, his ambivalence is tangible. How can you escape your past if you can't let go? What are we without our ghosts?
If David Lynch is famous for nightmares, maybe Guy Maddin creates daydreams. Maddin's soft-edged, silent film aesthetic, his memories permanently blanketed in falling snow, ensure My Winnipeg will make itself at home in your dreams.