My Winnipeg

This 2007 feature by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin—whose career has been spent making strange, surreal, absurdist films that look as if they could be lost movies from the past—serves up a tribute to his hometown presented as a documentary, but is actually a complete fiction, full of dubious facts concocted with a child's imagination. This city is “in the heart of the heart of the continent,” says Maddin (who also narrates), describing the locale solely in metaphors. His Winnipeg is a living thing—with underwater rivers serving as the veins that pump through the heart—that is home to a population of sleepwalkers. Here, the ghosts of the past coexist with the living, the homeless reside on rooftops, and one terrible winter long ago, a herd of panicked horses were flash-frozen in a lake and transformed into a temporary ice sculpture park. Somewhere between nightmare and fairy tale, the black-and-white production offers an equally perverse autobiographical tale roiling with unresolved issues. Maddin, who coaxed long-retired B-movie siren Ann Savage (of the cult film Detour) to play the role of his mother in this strange and surreal remembrance, creates his own archival footage (to illustrate his “facts”), lending a ghostly, time-worn texture to the film that evokes silent cinema and home movies while also suggesting fading memories and half-remembered dreams. Extras include five bonus shorts by Maddin, four brief “cine-essays” on Winnipeg, a conversation between Maddin and art critic Robert Enright, a 2008 featurette on the film's theatrical showing in Winnipeg, and an essay by critic Wayne Koestenbaum. Likely to mainly appeal to Maddin's fans, this is a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)