Tales From the Gimli Hospital sees 4K redux, plus more Guy Maddin greatness in Celluloid Dreamland, at The Cinematheque to February 20
Essentials like My Winnipeg and The Saddest Music In the World share space with lesser-known oddball triumphs like Careful
Tales From the Gimli Hospital.
The Cinematheque presents Celluloid Dreams: The Cinema of Guy Maddin until February 20
ONE OF CANADA’S greatest midnight-cult movies has a new 4K digital remastering, supervised by Winnipeg master Guy Maddin.
As part of the Celluloid Dreamland series now screening at The Cinematheque, you have the chance to view Tales From the Gimli Hospital Redux, the director’s alluringly strange and highly acclaimed first feature, from 1988.
Shot in flickery black-and-white homage to everything from early 1930s talkies to Icelandic folk tales, it takes place during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the last century. Deadpan, dreamlike, elliptical, and as odd as anything David Lynch could conjure, it explores the jealousy and madness of two men quarantined together in a hospital room—and tended to by three nurses in the heavy eye makeup and flapper-cut dresses of silent-screen stars. Deranged fun, screening January 27 (8:30 pm ) and 29 (6:30 pm).
For the next month, the series shows 12 of Maddin’s feature-length films, half of them projected from archival 35mm prints. Essential viewing includes 2003’s The Saddest Music In the World (February 3, 5, and 6), starring the unlikely but inspired duo of Isabella Rosselini and Kids in the Hall alumnus Mark McKinney in a Depression-era-musical satire. Think vaudeville through the looking glass. Equally important to the auteur’s catalogue is My Winnipeg (February 10, 13, and 16), a warped autobiography and delirious ode to his icy hometown, again filtered through the visual tropes of 1920s and ’30s cinema.
If you’re craving colour, you might want to grab the rare chance to see Maddin’s lesser-known Careful, from 1992, with its candy-tinted images (screening January 28 and 30). It’s set in the mythical Alpine village of Tolzbad, where everyone whispers and tip-toes about in fear of avalanches—that “carefulness” belying the usual Maddin-esque depravity seething just under the surface.
There is much more to discover and baffle—including a quartet of Maddin shorts. Find more information on the whole program here.
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