5. Awards Online Film Critics Society Awards Year: 2009 Result: Nominated Award: Best Documentary Toronto Film Critics Association Awards Year: 2008 Result: Won Award: Best Canadian Film San Francisco Film Critics Circle Year: 2008 Result: Won Award: Best Documentary Toronto International Film Festival Year: 2007 Result: Won Award: Best Canadian Feature Film
6. Critical Response “ I can say with absolute authority that you've never seen a film like Guy Maddin's love/hate/goodbye letter to his hometown of Winnipeg. Part real documentary and part drop-dead hysterical farce.” - EMPIRE REVIEW - TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “ Guy Maddin is cinema’s master pasticheur and he’s on wondrous form in this ‘docu-fantasia’ that blends fact and diction with a reckless glee that irradiates the brilliant recreations of past filmmaking styles... Shifting between fury, regret, and nostalgia, this reverie is as witty and moving as it’s visually dazling.”
7. Individuals were encouraged to create 3 minute films about their own home towns and submit it to the contest. Your Winnipeg Competition
8. “ So many intriguing films showed up for our consideration that I am now thoroughly convinced there is hope for the future of film, and that it lies in the hands of those young revolutionary artists working out of their own homes, their own hometowns and out on their streets, all using street-level technology accessible to the masses!” - Guy Maddin
24. What do you think Maddin was trying to portray or depict about Winnipeg when he talks about the “sleeping city of Winnipeg” and “filming his way out”?
28. “ A question I found myself asking while watching this film was, “What is more Canadian than a film about a Canadian’s experience of growing up in a Canadian city?” But in the end... I felt that the way that it is presented is that, for Maddin, Winnipeg stands alone. It is a part of him that cannot be separated; he cannot “disentangle from this town” as he attempts to do. Winnipeg has a unique (albeit, isolated) existence and history that is its own and it should be looked at as such. As a result, I think the significance of this film lies more in its “ Winnipegness” than its “Canadianness”.” -Sam Fernandes
29. What does this film say about Winnipeg? Does it actually say anything about the real Winnipeg?
30. “ We [as Canadians] take all of our national figures and events and present them in life-size, rather than giving them a sort-of emotional truth. My manifesto for this was to take all these facts and turn them into ecstatic truths... and just present them with some sense of glory and enchantment.” - Guy Maddin
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32. Is there a lack of nationally unifying myths and heroes? Does Guy Maddin succeed in creating ecstatic truth in the figures he presents in My Winnipeg ?
