1. Guy Maddin
2. BJ Verot
3. Aaron Zeghers

In many ways, seeing Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World) voted as favourite local filmmaker isn’t a surprise. The director’s name is as synonymous with Winnipeg as the Golden Boy or the bitter cold of winter. But it’s also a fitting testament to his staying power, with the celebrated auteur nearing 30 years as a major force in world cinema.

“I’m giddy about everything right now - can one be cautiously giddy?” Maddin tells me about the work he’s produced in 2014. His newest feature, The Forbidden Room, is premiering Jan. 26 at the Sundance Film Festival. “I think it’s by far the best movie I’ve ever been involved with.”

The Forbidden Room stars an impressive ensemble of actors including Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric and Roy Dupuis. The film was shot entirely in public spaces in Paris and Montreal, letting passersby form an audience and witness the shooting
process up-close.

“It was like being a worker in an ant farm,” Maddin says. The curious public could press their faces right up and watch whatever we were doing. And I’m sure a lot of what people saw was as inscrutable as the toil of ants, but very lazy ants, since filmmaking is so boring to watch and consists mostly of crew members scratching themselves, or each other, and frequently checking text messages.”

Maddin’s other new project, Seances, was filmed simultaneously with The Forbidden Room using the same actors. Maddin describes Seances as an “interactive thing” hosted online by the National Film Board, to be launched in 2015.

“Anyone can visit our Seances and commune with the spirits of lost and long-forgotten film narratives,” Maddin explains. “We have amassed many hours of freshly-shot movie which will recombine with itself in endless permutations, creating a new movie for each visitor, then destroying that movie so that no one else will ever be able to watch it.”

Part of the series: The Uniter 30

Published in Volume 69, Number 15 of The Uniter (January 7, 2015)