SIFF Cinema returns with "My Winnipeg"
If you were charged with creating a documentary about your hometown, how would you tell its story? Would you present a linear history or an examination of cultural trends throughout its various ages? Would you focus on the places or the people? If you were Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, known for his self-concious and surreal films (including The Saddest Music in the World and shorts like Fleshpots of Antiquity), you might create a truly original documentary like My Winnipeg, the film that reopens SIFF Cinema after the break following this year’s festival.
Maddin takes an extremely loose view of the documentary form with My Winnipeg, which he describes as a “docufantasia”, a strange term that perfectly fits this intriguing film. He presents the story of Winnipeg in a uniquely personal way, casting himself (as portrayed by actor Darcy Fehr) as a sleepwalking man trapped in his perpetually sleeping hometown by the power of his past. Maddin seeks escape from the ties that bind him to Winnipeg by recreating on film his personal history, a history which he seamlessly blends with Winnipeg’s civic history via archival footage (both actual and recreated) and old family movies combined with footage shot for the film in black and white to match the old noir films that he loves.
Noir influences one of the best choices Maddin made for his film–casting legendary noir film fatale Ann Savage (Detour) as his larger-than-life and wickedly funny mother. One of the film’s amusing conceits is that “Maddin”’s brother and sister are characters portrayed by actors he has hired to represent him but his other “really” is his mother. This meta-humor adds an excellent element of sly, self-mocking satire. The scenes featuring his mother are both cringe-inducing and hilarious, usually at the same time.
My Winnipeg tells its story in episodic form which allows Maddin room to present different chapters of the city’s history without straining for connection between events from different eras, using his musings on his family’s issues as a springboard to the city’s. If some of the facts he presents about Winnipeg seem too outrageous to be true, well, that’s part of the charm of the story. Ultimately, My Winnipeg becomes a dreamy concoction of a film that is both sharp-tongued and soft-hearted and ultimately offers up a suggestion of what “home” means in a way that seems more honest than a more straightfoward portrait of the city might offer. Maddin’s twisted vision of Winnipeg makes me want to visit it more than any travelogue could and left me happily pondering what makes my own hometown, Seattle, so meaningful to me.
My Winnipeg screens at SIFF Cinema June 27 - July 3.
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