The Guy Maddin Collection

One person's experimental film is another person's artsy indulgence. Such is the case with cult Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin in this trio of eccentric works. Shot on blatantly artificial sets, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs looks like a fairy tale and plays like a stilted community theater production, with Shelley Duvall, Alice Krige and Frank Gorshin furnishing some vaguely familiar faces in a romantic story of unrequited love that takes place on an ostrich farm and nearby enchanted forest. Next we have Archangel, a twisted homage to German silent film (employing stylized black-and-white scenes, intertitled cards, and recorded dialogue), whose story involves a love triangle between an amnesiac soldier and two women in a small Russian town at the close of World War I. Finally, The Heart of the World, a short film edited at a very frantic pace, ostensibly satirizes silent Soviet propaganda films. An optional choice for more esoteric collections. (T. Rich)