Film writer/director from Winnipeg, Canada who has been making low-budget independent films since the mid-80s. IMDb link
Works include:
- Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988): While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told a tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Einar the Lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofridur in a Gimli of old.
- Archangel (1990): A Canadian soldier sent with an expeditionary force to Archangel, Russia in 1918 comes to believe that a local woman is his deceased girlfriend.
- Careful (1992): One of his first feature films, but deliberately shot in a black-and-white older style, about a small town in the mountains which is constantly at-risk for a Hair-Trigger Avalanche
- Twilight Of The Ice Nymphs (1997): His first feature in color, a fairy tale about a man who returns from prison to his family on an strange island
- Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002): A retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula done without dialogue, using a ballet company to tell the story through interpretive dance
- The Saddest Music in the World (2003): A dark comedy about a Depression-era beer baroness who holds a songwriting contest, starring Isabella Rossellini and Mark McKinney.
- Cowards Bend the Knee or The Blue Hands (2003): A hockey player (also named Guy Maddin) ditches his girlfriend for the daughter of a woman who runs a secret abortion clinic, but this woman will not allow herself to be touched by human hands.
- Brand Upon the Brain! (2006): Silent film/mock-documentary where Maddin (again played by other actors) discovers shocking family secrets when he restores an old lighthouse.
- My Winnipeg (2007): A portrait of film-maker Guy Maddin's home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
- and many more
Tropes applying to Guy Maddin:
- Deliberately Monochrome
- Le Film Artistique
- In-Camera Effects: The low-fi look of his films is achieved by Practical Effects rather than alterations in post-production:
- He shoots on old film stock and with old lenses which they would scratch to make little gashes appear on the film throughout, then rotate the lens so that gashes appeared in different places during the course of the film.
- Vaseline was put on the lenses which makes the films appear "fuzzy" in places.
- Some of the films are shot with black and white Super 8 film, then blown up to 35mm.
- Guy Maddin also uses one direct light source (or at least the illusion of one light source) which blanches the actors' faces and gives his films a very shadowy feel.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Shows up in Cowards Bend the Knee and Brand Upon the Brain!.
- Production Posse: He and Isabella Rossellini formed one for the better part of The Noughties, starting with her appearance in The Saddest Music in the World.
- Retraux: The vintage look of most of his movies.
- Silence Is Golden: His film resemble those of the silent movie era.
