Wednesday, January 29 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
MY WINNIPEG
Directed by Guy Maddin • 2007
In an effort to describe the mystical techniques that produced My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin coined the term “docu-fantasia,” preemptively swatting away the idea that a film commissioned for Canada’s Documentary Channel might be anything close to conventional nonfiction fare. “Rather than having to research facts, I just conducted all my research in my memory and in my heart.” Through these interior lenses, he attempts to “film his way out” of his hometown, combining found and original video footage, reenactments, a variety of surreal local legends (Sleepwalkers! Séances! Man pageants! Bison stampedes!), and some serious psychological plumbing rendered ghostly and twisted via a patchwork of film and video formats. Maddin even brought B-movie great Ann Savage (star of Detour) out of retirement to play the part of his mother. Roger Ebert was so moved by the film that he wrote Maddin a touching letter describing his own hometown in his own “docu-fantasia” style: “That film just keeps on stirring in my mind. It is reality beyond reality…That’s exactly the way I think about Urbana, which, as I’m sure you know, has the Largest Rim-Supported Building in the World, the Boneyard Creek into which all the Indians threw themselves when they died, the Stadium that Red Grange Built, a house in which fairies once lived….” Even almost twenty years after its release, this eerie filmic exorcism may have the power to bring us all back home, whether we want to return or not. (RL)
80 min • Buffalo Gal Pictures • 35mm from Chicago Film Society collections, permission IFC Films
Preceded by: Guy Maddin trailer reel – 8 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: Choose Me on Wednesday, February 5 at NEIU