Filmes
Jornal da Mostra
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31ª Mostra > 11/02/2008
Text: Leon Cakoff, from Berlim, to ‘Jornal da Mostra’
GUY MADDIN DARES EVEN MORE WITH ‘MY WINNIPEG’
For the self-made filmmaker and university professor Guy Maddin, time doesn’t affect cinema. At least not his own, which keeps on being faithful to the language experimented by the pioneers on the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries. Time, in Maddin’s films, have influence only in memory issues. And that is the precious element which gives life to his almost silent movies. This time, at the opening screening of the parallel section Forum, at the 58th Berlin Festival, Guy Maddin dared even more, by narrating live his own film, MY WINNIPEG.
Last year Guy Maddin dared with his feature film BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!, which was narrated in Berlin by Isabella Rossellini and, in São Paulo, even better, by Marília Gabriela. Rossellini, allied to Guy Maddin’s producer, Jodi Shapiro, opened the MY WINNIPEG screening with GREEN PORNO, a series of well-humored short films about insects’ sex life.
Winnipeg is Maddin’s hometown. “Before weather changes, Winnipeg was considered the second coldest town in the world; I hope it will be again, together with Siberia, one of the first frozen cities”, said the filmmaker after the screening of his film in Berlin. But it is not only the cold that MY WINNIPEG misses. As always, Guy Maddin makes a sad and smart film, an alert against the evil of speed, which changes the natural timing of things and the cities that destroy themselves with symbols of modernity. Maddin complains about the absence of simple values of live and, above all, about the loss of innocence. With his unique cinema he suggests rescuing the simplicity of life, looking back on the past generations, respecting nature, memory and feelings as essential and fulfilling values. Guy Maddin, more than a filmmaker narrating live his film, on the stage of the old Delphi theater, presented himself as a touching missionary.
More Berlin Festival at http://www.berlinale.de
English version: Laura Rebessi