Cinefantastique Online

MY WINNIPEG – the “docu-fantasy” from cult director Guy Maddin – opens for a one-week run today at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles. Cinefantastique Online has an interview with Maddin, which you can read here.The Los Angeles Times has a review of the film here.

I’ve never quite warmed up to Maddin’s eccentric cinematic aesthetic. DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY was watchable because I find the subject matter interesting (a sort of silent-movie ballet version of Bram Stoker’s tale), but more recently I found BRAND UPON THE BRAIN to be an absolutely tedious exercise.

Still, the new film sounds interesting. As Dan Person’s says in his intro to his interview with Maddin:

Wait, MY WINNIPEG is a documentary? You mean all the stuff about horses freezing in the river and becoming a major attraction for strolling lovers, and the law requiring that former homeowners be permitted entry into their old abodes for the night, not to mention the rooftop homeless community and the faux Nazi invasion, all that stuff is real? Yup, the director swears it. But then again, the director is Guy Maddin, he of the dream-state narrative and the retro shooting style, the man who has made a virtue of taking incredible notions and making them feel as if they’d always been part of the landscape. Tapping pasts both personal and municipal, wrapping them in a Mobius strip fantasy about an endlessly thwarted, train-bound escape from the city of his youth, the director has created a factual film that feels no less incredible than his most surreal efforts.