Seattle International Film Festival: My Winnipeg June 27, 2008

O Winnipeg! Glorious Winnipeg! Home of the Manitoba Moose, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and
the brilliant filmmaker Guy Maddin! My Winnipeg is Maddin’s tribute to his hometown in the form
of a failed farewell letter. As a train endlessly loops around the snowy capital, the narrator
struggles to stay awake long enough to break the bonds that tie him to home, “Snowy,
sleepwalking Winnipeg—I must leave it. I must leave it now. But how to escape one’s city?”
Ostensibly a documentary since Canada’s Documentary Channel commissioned the piece,
Maddin’s aim is to enchant as well as inform. He more accurately describes the film as a “docufantasia.”
A delirious blend of history and personal memory filtered through Maddin’s fervid
imagination, My Winnipeg chronicles the dreamy life of the sleepwalking capital of the world.
Riotously outlandish claims are made for this icy city at the geographical center of North
America, but Maddin’s stories of séances in the Manitoba Legislative Building and ghostly junk
men wandering alleyways are of a piece with his impressionistic recounting of civic history. Who
but Maddin would recall film noir’s fiercest femme fatale, the legendary Ann Savage (Detour)
and think, “Mother!” Beautiful black-and-white photography layers live actors with archival
footage as the insistent murmur of the train lulls the viewer into the perversely logical and
wonderfully entertaining world of Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg. Maddin may be an impassioned and
unreliable narrator, but his extraordinary history rings truer than fact. (2007, 80 min.) Premiere!

Tickets: $9-$10

Official Website: http://www.siff.net/cinema/detail.aspx?id=27597&FID=112