The presentation discusses Guy Maddin's film 'My Winnipeg,' which combines documentary and fantasy elements to explore his relationship with his hometown, Winnipeg. The film had a budget of $600,000 and grossed a worldwide total of $285,469, garnering several awards. Key themes include memory, identity, and the impact of urban changes, with Maddin reflecting on Winnipeg's unique existence and his attempts to reconnect with its past.

1. My Winnipeg FILM 323 Presentation

2. A Filmmaker, Auteur, Winnipegger Guy Maddin

3. Box Office Success Budget: $600,000 Domestic Total Gross: $159,363 + Foreign Total Gross: $126, 106 = Worldwide: $285,469 Opening Weekend: $14,309

4. Country: Total Gross: France and Algeria, Monaco, $31, 274 Morocco and Tunisia United Kingdom and Ireland $94,832 and Malta Foreign Success

5. Awards Online Film Critics Society Awards Year: 2009 Result: Nominated Award: Best Documentary Toronto Film Critics Association Awards Year: 2008 Result: Won Award: Best Canadian Film San Francisco Film Critics Circle Year: 2008 Result: Won Award: Best Documentary Toronto International Film Festival Year: 2007 Result: Won Award: Best Canadian Feature Film

6. Critical Response “ I can say with absolute authority that you've never seen a film like Guy Maddin's love/hate/goodbye letter to his hometown of Winnipeg. Part real documentary and part drop-dead hysterical farce.” - EMPIRE REVIEW - TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “ Guy Maddin is cinema’s master pasticheur and he’s on wondrous form in this ‘docu-fantasia’ that blends fact and diction with a reckless glee that irradiates the brilliant recreations of past filmmaking styles... Shifting between fury, regret, and nostalgia, this reverie is as witty and moving as it’s visually dazling.”

7. Individuals were encouraged to create 3 minute films about their own home towns and submit it to the contest. Your Winnipeg Competition

8. “ So many intriguing films showed up for our consideration that I am now thoroughly convinced there is hope for the future of film, and that it lies in the hands of those young revolutionary artists working out of their own homes, their own hometowns and out on their streets, all using street-level technology accessible to the masses!” - Guy Maddin

9. Is My Winnipeg Universal? Winnipeg: Heart of the World?

10. Key Themes and Undertones

11. The Forks Conjunction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers Visually represented with his mother’s lap – he cannot tear himself away from it

12. “Forks, lap, forks, lap…” Aboriginal Legend Rivers running below the surface of the Red and Assiniboine

13. “Forks beneath the forks”

14. Sleepwalking “ Winnipeg has 10 times the sleepwalking rate of any other city in the world ”

15. Sleepwalking Winnipeg is a dream that Maddin is unable to awake from

16. Attempting to return to a past that cannot be recaptured

17. Does Maddin’s attempt to return everything in Winnipeg to what it was in the past reflect anything about his Canadian identity?

18. The Winnipeg Arena Destruction of the hockey arena “ a crime against history and memory, a futile attempt by Winnipeg to erase its own past”.

19. A way of escaping the city

20. Maddin’s strong connection to the arena as a Canadian “ born in the dressing room and this is where I learned everything I ever learnt about being male”.

22. Back Lanes “ Back lanes that exist on no maps”

23. “ filming his way out of the city”

24. What do you think Maddin was trying to portray or depict about Winnipeg when he talks about the “sleeping city of Winnipeg” and “filming his way out”?

25. Mise-en-abyme

27. What particular stylistic devices help blur the lines between fantasy and reality in this film?

28. “ A question I found myself asking while watching this film was, “What is more Canadian than a film about a Canadian’s experience of growing up in a Canadian city?” But in the end... I felt that the way that it is presented is that, for Maddin, Winnipeg stands alone. It is a part of him that cannot be separated; he cannot “disentangle from this town” as he attempts to do. Winnipeg has a unique (albeit, isolated) existence and history that is its own and it should be looked at as such. As a result, I think the significance of this film lies more in its “ Winnipegness” than its “Canadianness”.” -Sam Fernandes

29. What does this film say about Winnipeg? Does it actually say anything about the real Winnipeg?

30. “ We [as Canadians] take all of our national figures and events and present them in life-size, rather than giving them a sort-of emotional truth. My manifesto for this was to take all these facts and turn them into ecstatic truths... and just present them with some sense of glory and enchantment.” - Guy Maddin

32. Is there a lack of nationally unifying myths and heroes? Does Guy Maddin succeed in creating ecstatic truth in the figures he presents in My Winnipeg ?

33. Final Remarks

34. Presentation by: Stephen George Date given: March 29, 2011 Image Credits: All Images taken from the film.