Happy Easter. I hope some of the subscribers of Bravo! managed to catch the showing of Guy Maddin‘s Brand Upon The Brain! last week.
The film The Heart of the World is one of the best short films to celebrate the medium of film. Contained within we get pretty much a feature length narrative in 6 minutes (with about as many cuts!). Shot in the style of Russian propaganda films of the 1920s but with a postmortem level of irony nevertheless quite enthusiastically earnest. It is drama, comedy, and science fiction all in one snappy package.
Anna, the state scientist (here a stand in for the medium of film) has two boyfriends, one being vulgarity (a creepy mortician), the other being divine (an actor playing Christ in the Passion Play), but in the end is raped by commerce (an industrialist) before finally sacrificing herself to save the medium (KINO!) Yes, how can anyone not enjoy this?
Enjoy the resurrection. Happy Easter Sunday.
Ugh no offense, but I think I might be the only Canadian left who doesn’t like Guy Maddin’s work. I mean don’t get me wrong. Un chien andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are great and all, but this faux silent 20s aesthetic is royally played out and in all honesty seems like a smoke screen for a lack of fresh ideas. Maddin’s got mad skills that can pay the bills but he needs to move on IMO.
But anyway, you guys rock. Keep up the great work!