- Born
- Nicknames
- Magma Head
- Guymoe
- Flurpie
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Guy Maddin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Herdis Maddin (a hair-dresser) and Charles "Chas" Maddin (grain clerk and general manager of the Maroons, a Winnipeg hockey team). Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg, working as a bank manager, house painter, and photographic archivist before becoming a film-maker. Maddin produced his first film in 1985, and since then his distinctive style of recreating and renovating silent film conventions and international critical acclaim have made him one of Canada's most celebrated directors. In 2003, Maddin also expanded his career to become an author and an installation artist.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpousesKim Morgan(December 11, 2010 - ?)Elise Moore(August 19, 1995 - 2002) (divorced)Martha Jane Waugh(1976 - 1979) (1 child)
- Films often imitate the visual look and special effects of the silent film era
- Plots usually involve a series of complicated, entangled, unsuccessful love stories
- Often uses motifs of sexual repression and errant perversity
- Characters frequently suffer from amnesia, forgetting even their own marriages and loves
- Many of his films are set in a mythologized version of his hometown of Winnipeg.
- Maddin's father Chas was blinded in one eye when his mother held him close to her as an infant and an open brooch pierced his eyelid. A similar event occurs in Maddin's third feature film, Careful.
- Maddin's films often feature autobiographical elements, especially his "Me Trilogy" (of Cowards Bend the Knee, Brand Upon the Brain!, and My Winnipeg) of three films that feature a protagonist named "Guy Maddin".
- Maddin's films since 2003 have often begun as or developed from installation art projects (particularly Cowards Bend the Knee and Brand Upon the Brain!), and in 2012 Maddin began shooting a series of 100 short films, with each production being at the same time a gallery performance.
- Maddin is the subject of four books, two interview books (Guy Maddin: Interviews, edited by D.K. Holm, and Caelum Vatnsdal's Kino Delirium: The Films of Guy Maddin) and two academic studies (Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg by Darren Wershler, and Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin by William Beard).
- In 2012, was among 70 new appointees to receive the Order of Canada, one of the country's highest civilian honours.
- I've never bought that cliché that you should never take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I'm more of a person who loves his grandmother. I'm thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, you notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You're totally sucked into the story. You've been scared, moved, engaged, and then every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or a nose hair or that she's getting pretty wrinkly and that she's sitting on your foot, and then you go back into the story. I'm one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother.
- I always thought that it was great when people told me that my films are impossible to put in a drawer. So I'd say: 'Oh, thank you', and they'd respond: 'No, that's terrible. You would be doing yourself a big favour if you worked in a genre.' And then they'd tell me I should work in science fiction, a genre I don't find much of a connection with for some reason, even though it has so much potential. To some extent, science fiction and horror seem so close together as an element of fantasy. But I still like my horror films scary yet slightly allegorical to a degree where I'm not sure whether I can figure out the allegory. If I can't figure it out, that's even better. But it has to be rooted in something that we all feel, whether we believe in saucers or vampires or not. We all feel those things but they are dressed up in the horror genre garb. I like that.
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