What’s Happening

How – and to ask the more urgent question, why – has Guy Maddin created his handmade, toylike cinema of delirium? Those of us who have been rapt before his pictures – those magical instruments for converting antiquarianism into novelty, irony candor, decadence into innocence – will be grateful for this insider’s account of his life and career. which Caelum Vatnsdal has composed with a random magniloquence well suited to its subject. – Stuart Klawans, former film critic for The Nation, and author of Film Folies: The Cinema Out of OrderHere’s the Guy Maddin paradox: In any other country but Canada he’d be a national treasure, but what other country but Canada could possibly have produced his particular genius? It’s the kind of thing one wonders while gazing upon his awesome weirdness. – Geoff Pevere, film critic for The Toronto Star and co-author of Mondo Canuck: A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey