Guy Maddin

Maddin has three older siblings: Ross (b. 1944), Cameron (1946–63), and Janet (b. 1949).

Maddin attended Winnipeg public schools— the Greenway School (elementary school), General Wolfe (junior high school), and the Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute (high school).

Guy Maddin (born February 28, 1956) is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer, and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Maddin's early life was marked by tragedy—in February 1963, his brother Cameron killed himself on the grave of his girlfriend, who had died in a car accident.

Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg, graduating in 1977 without a plan to become a filmmaker.

That same year, Maddin's father died suddenly after a stroke, and Maddin married Martha Jane Waugh.

Their daughter, Jilian, was born in 1978, and Maddin and Waugh divorced in 1979.

After graduating, Maddin held a variety of odd jobs, including bank manager, house painter, and photo archivist.

Maddin began to take film classes at the University of Manitoba.

There, Maddin met film professor Stephen Snyder, who held regular film screenings of titles from the school's film library at his home.

Maddin attended, as did some early collaborators, including his friend John Boles Harvie, the future star of Maddin's first film, and filmmaker John Paizs.

Maddin appeared as an actor in two of Paizs' short films, as a student in Oak, Ivy, and Other Dead Elms (1982) and as a transvestite, homicidal nurse in The International Style (1983).

Maddin drew early inspiration from the films of John Paizs, as well as experimental shorts by Stephen Snyder.

Other early influences included L'Age d'Or by Luis Buñuel (in collaboration with Salvador Dalí) and Eraserhead by David Lynch.

Maddin has stated that these films, along with the work of Paizs and Snyder, "were movies that were primitive in many respects. They were low budget, they used nonactors or nonstars, they used atmospheres and ideas, and were unbelievably honest, frank, and, therefore, exciting to me. They made moviemaking seem possible to me."

Maddin also met film professor George Toles, who became Maddin's cowriter on many of his future films.

Maddin's core group of friends from this period, who played various roles in the production of his early film projects, were known as "the Drones" and included Harvie, Ian Handford, and Kyle McCulloch (now a writer for South Park).

Maddin began shooting The Dead Father in 1982 and finished the film in 1985.

Spurred by the work of Snyder and Paizs, and together with Harvie and Handford, Maddin decided to begin making films and founded a film company called "Extra Large Productions" (they first decided on the name "Jumbo Productions" and went to get a jumbo pizza to celebrate, but changed the name when the pizzeria in Gimli, Manitoba, only served "extra large" pizzas).

Maddin cast John Harvie in the lead role as the son, and University of Manitoba medical professor Dr. Dan P. Snidal as the dead father.

Since completing his first film in 1985, Maddin has become one of Canada's most well-known and celebrated filmmakers.

Maddin has directed twelve feature films and numerous short films, in addition to publishing three books and creating a host of installation art projects.

A number of Maddin's recent films began as or developed from installation art projects, and his books also relate to his film work.

Maddin is known for his fascination with lost Silent-era films and for incorporating their aesthetics into his own work.

Maddin has been the subject of much critical praise and academic attention, including two books of interviews with Maddin and two book-length academic studies of his work.

Maddin joined the Winnipeg Film Group around this time, and also became friends with producer Greg Klymkiw, with whom he began making a cable access television show, Survival (c. 1985–87).

Survival was a satirical talk show centred around, as its opening credits noted, how "we must survive the inevitable social/economic collapse and/or nuclear holocaust".

The show became a cult hit in Winnipeg and excerpts were re-released on the compilation DVD Winnipeg Babysitter.

Maddin plays a masked character on the show named "Concerned Citizen Stan".

Maddin's first short film (as director, writer, producer, and cinematographer) was The Dead Father, a 25-minute black-and-white film about a young man whose father dies but continues to visit his family and disapprove of his son's life.

Its budget is estimated at CA$5,000.

The Dead Father (1985) was shot in black-and-white on sixteen-millimetre film.

The style of the film owes much to the work of the Surrealists, with Maddin citing Luis Buñuel and Man Ray as its main influences.

Critics routinely cite, as an example of Maddin's dream-like tone, the climactic scene of the film, where the son attempts to resolve his relationship with his dead father by uncovering his corpse (hidden to sleep at night in some nearby brush) and attempting to devour his father using a large spoon—since the dead father awakens, the son cannot finish eating him and must instead pack his body away into a trunk in the family's attic.

Although Maddin did not feel that the film's initial, Winnipeg premiere had gone well, John Paizs convinced him to submit the film to the Toronto Film Festival and the festival accepted the film.

At the festival Maddin met Atom Egoyan, Jeremy Podeswa, Norman Jewison, and began to form connections with Canadian filmmakers across the national scene.

Maddin was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honour, in 2012.

Maddin first served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies in 2015.

Until then, he lived in Winnipeg.

Guy Maddin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Herdis Maddin (a hairdresser) and Charles "Chas" Maddin (grain clerk and general manager of the Maroons, a Winnipeg hockey team).