My Winnipeg

Morbidly funny but unmistakably melancholy, My Winnepeg finds Guy Maddin trying desperately but, inevitably, failing to escape the memories of his youth. It's a movie primarily concerned with the perception of the past, presenting nostalgia as both repellent and attractive, presenting the hazy dreamscape of memory as both minefield and cage. Blurring fact and fiction, it suggests that truth isn't found within those disparate realms but within their molten amalgamation in the psyche.

Maddin crying over his hometown hockey rink getting demolished like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. You know what I love about this dude is he's not actually playing 'hard to get', he's straight up telling you what the point of this experiment is. So it's forgiven that he doesn't actually figure anything out. What's effective is the local mythologizing, casting Winnipeg as an eerie nether-space of sleepwalkers, psychic undercurrents, frozen mares.

My first expierence with Mad Maddin will for sure not be the last. Far from being flawless, My Winnipeg is constantly compelling, impossible to predict and quite simply unlike ANYTHING I have ever seen or experienced. Poetry meets documentary, German expressionism inspired aesthetics goes post modern, and... well - you gotta see it for yourself!...

Maddin tries to "escape" his hometown of Winnipeg by filming an absurbist, alternate history of it. Whereas Herzog's documentaries sometimes reach for an "ecstatic truth", Maddin seems to be aiming for a "poetic truth". As he does it with his usual brand of humor. Compared to some of his other work, it's not as visually idiosyncratic, but still unlike anything else out there, with stylistic nods to film noir (casting Detour legend Ann Savage earns some bonus points) and Soviet cinema.

A look at Winnipeg through they eyes of Guy Maddin is a unique and mesmerizing experience. He throws out factoids that may or may not be true and weaves around them a history of both the city and his life to create a film unlike any other I've seen.

Guy Maddin is a hit/miss affair for me. He aims high with artistic pretense, and while sometimes he achieves something fresh, something more than the sum of its parts, other times it falls flat despite the bells and whistles. My Winnipeg, as its name suggests a personal portrait of the city of Winnipeg, is mostly the latter kind.

A beautiful love letter. As Maddin tries to rid himself from memories of home he in turn hyper-realizes the wonders and terrors of his childhood. Regardless of how far out he takes his viewers into these wacky subconscious constructs of his hometown, a core truth keeps the film lucid and heartfelt. A tribute to the grounds that raised us.

This makes me feel really sad. Maybe I don't know if I share his nostalgia for place, but the agony and the absurdity of it still resonates really deeply. A hypnotising portrayal of Maddin's futile struggle to rationally separate himself from his hazy, distorted attachment to Winnipeg. It's the little, forgettable things that somehow seem to eat away at us, whether they're smells, idiosyncrasies or stupid folklores, and he really captures the way our minds contort them, but won't let go.

A very personally woven film involving a very relatable sense of lost childhood in a life-long home town.

maddin fervently, unsuccessfully tries to escape his winnipeg, the heart of the heart of the continent, a sinister dreamscape suspended in memory by an ever-present drape of snow, populated by psychic mothers, sad architecture, a cadre of dead hockey veterans playing on inside a half-demolished stadium. an ode to home both tongue-in-cheek and implicitly sad, its bizarre, dreamy anecdotes and reconstructions universalise its nostalgia as a waking dream we flee and cling to simultaneously.

I watched this for a Canadian Cinema class and I just about imploded like a dying star trying to write about how it is related to another slice of Canadian bacon My Bloody Valentine

Accomplished and highly original. I haven't found Maddin's films funny before but his narration in this doc-meets-mockumentary-meets-autobiographical essay film is quite hilarious.

I'm sure Maddin had to do this very personal work as a form of unbridled self-expression and artistic release, which I believe is immune to criticism. It's something every artist needs to do. So in order to grade this one, I have to do it arbitrarily based solely on my viewing experience. I found My Winnipeg to be an undoubtedly unique and interesting experience but also a tedious and frustrating one as it felt a little too self-indulgent.

Just plain good cinema, the first avant-garde film that I've ever left completely satisfied. Maddin seems like the friendliest man on earth.

Strange sort-of-documentary (except Maddin cheerfully makes things up throughout the film) is often funny and sometimes quite nice to look at, but overall there's not enough there to justify the feature length.

"The forks... the lap... the forks... the lap!"

Not dissimilar at times to David Blair's enigmatic WAX in concocting strange solipsistic fantasies in a pseudo-documentary mode. Maddin's imagery is hypnotic, and employs a talented editor, but it feels interrupted perpetually by his narration, which I find mildly exasperating. I like the tone of this film, but, as I've said before, I don't find Maddin amusing at all, and kind of wish he'd retain the 'silent' element of his greatest aesthetic influences.

It's really fitting that Maddin's version of Winnipeg gets blended with and somewhat lost in my own. The way he depicts the hazy, dreamy nature of snowy winter streets at night is so dead on.

One of the most utterly unique films I’ve ever seen, a hilarious and poignant mixture of video essay, history lesson, Tim Rogers story, magical realism, and pure absurdism.

I think the best way to experience this is to just mute it and put on some ambient music. Maddin's narration is insufferable.

Another personal documentary-ish film from a Canadian filmmaker in the same lineage as Polley's "Stories We Tell", it's a creative, haunting saunter through Winnipeg and Maddin's life in it. Equal parts self-expressive and self-indulgent, while it's certainly a notable piece of cinema, how much it held my interest is another matter.

I first saw The Forbidden Room and hated it, but this was excellent. I'll have to check out his other stuff. *update*: I did not like his other stuff lol.

Em honra do centenário de Ann Savage. Melhor que um bom documentário, apenas um excelente mockumentário, o que é caso desse aqui que não traça uma linha entre a realidade e fantasia em termos de filmes autobiográficos e que torna tudo muito mais interessante. BlurayRip no MakingOff.

The intimacy of a memory reel is unmatched, more so with the melancholic narration of it's beholder. Painted how I'd imagine my own portraits streamed together, this is wonderful.

teeming with homosexual subtext and all the better for it?!

What an experience. Surrealist memories from the filmmaker's POV beats by-the-numbers fact telling. I was confused at first until I became okay with the idea that this was storytelling. Fav scene: the sheer absurdity but believability of the stuck horses.

Whatever it is Guy Maddin does in these movies I just know I love the hell out of it.

Guy Maddin's journey into the depths of Canadian madness, which is a pretty hilarious place to be, if you get Guy Maddin. My fave of his

Need to rewatch.

Star Rating: ★★★★1/2

watched: 2015, 2018

Salt Galata.

I think what makes Maddin's movies worthy is their dreamlike scheme which owes a lot to their silence. Through that archaic silence they have a timeless and chaotic poetry. But when he "speaks" like in this movie suddenly all the dream disappears, in that sense "Saddest Music in the World" tells much more about him and his Winnipeg than this too overt movie. I prefer classic Maddin.

so self-indulgent. so canadian. interesting in terms of style, but style quickly becomes trite when there is no substance to back it up. this is probably my least favourite type of filmmaking. when the filmmaker doesn't acknowledge the audience and makes a film for the purpose of self-expression. the truth is though, nobody else gives a shit about one person's self-expression unless it rings true on a universal level. and this film most certainly didn't.

an exercise in semiotics, onirism, memories and ghosts that lie within it beautifully crafted into a piece of art

The poetic equivalent of a documentary as Guy Maddin presents his feverish dream-like look at what is Winnipeg. We believe every word from Maddin's mouth not because they're true but because Maddin makes them sound true. His narration is so full of passion, kindness, humour, anger, that by the end we are in love with this strange, wonderful town at the heart of the heart of Canada.

I wasn't entirely enthused by the story of the film, but the technical prowess on display made it enjoyable. Many different techniques of trick photography are on display here, even including Indian shadow puppets.

This is a weird film that I only enjoyed parts of it. I assume I would enjoy the movie more if I had ever been to Winnipeg.

This was just all around brilliant.

A shining example of film as poetry. Once you're fully drawn in, you're swept along in the film's dreamy current.

"The dominant Maddin is the narrating filmmaker, more palpably present than usual in the sound of his voice, bemoaning a lost golden age of his hometown faced absurdities of the tall tale." - Bill Weber

killer pug

Maddin's dream-like fantasy documentary on his hometown of Winnipeg is one of the more compelling essay-ish films I've ever seen. The film's poetry, visual inventiveness, and ambiguous affection on the part of Maddin for his hometown are its strong suits. Though we may desire it, the film suggests, we cannot escape our past--it helps to define who we are, placing certain limits while making other things possible.

I've been hesitant with Maddin, but this was pretty darn special.

Whether what is shown in Guy Maddin's film about his home town is true or false is not the main concern, but instead it's a docu-fantasia (on the DVD box) which expresses his concerns and memories of his home with far more sincerity and depth than a straight forward documentary, almost always charming or hilarious because of his narration, and a smorgasbord of visual images. This avoids self-ego completely, which could have easily happened, and is completely heartfelt.

A bizarre, and tedious exercise.

It's a visual poem more than anything else. I've never seen anything like it before, it's great. At one point Maddin says that he's inventing a new genre of film, which is clearly true. On the whole it's a completely new and invigorating movie experience.

I'm a proud Winnipegger and I enjoyed this movie adding some nice mythology to my home town, but outside of a couple scenes there doesn't seem to be much going on. For the most part the film tries to get by on humour.

Not bad, not great. I don't know if the color shots work within the context of what Maddin establishes, and I find that Maddin's style can quickly become too repetitive. The two scenes where there was almost no voice-over narration (The seance, deer hitting the car) work the best. This would be a great companion piece with Sans Soleil, which I would bet money Maddin had seen and drew inspiration from. Worth a look.

For sure it's very very interesting and original. The narration becomes a bit much and sometimes seems forced, like it has to be more poetic than it should be, but then other times he's right on, mixing fact and fiction to create a work that explores memory, nostalgia and ultimately, the difficulty to truly leave your town/city (who you are) and the oppressive nature of this. Really liked the images and the cinematography as well. Also enjoyed his stuff about hockey rinks when he gets angry.

O Canada

19 Subat 08,19:30,ifistanbul08 fest. afm salon 1 & Yer yer guldurse de cogunlukla sikici bir belgesel-vari film olmus.Guy Maddin yasadigi yeri anlatmis kendi uslubuyla.Tamam, Guy Maddin'nin uslubunu seviyorum.Fakat bu sefer baskasinin bebeklik fotograflarina bakmak gibi olmus, bizi pek alakadar etmiyor.Cunku onlari yasayanlar biz degiliz ve yasananlar da ogrenilecek kadar ilginc degil.Sonucta ortaya kisisel bir film cikmis. (10 ocak 09: simdi dusunuyorumda oldukce farkli ve etkili bir yapim)