Winnipeg: Avant-garde auteur Guy Maddin is venturing into new territory as he prepares to shoot a documentary about his Winnipeg hometown.

But Maddin, whose past work includes the feature The Saddest Music in the World and the International Emmy Award-winning dance film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, won’t be straying far from his dramatic roots in this as-yet-untitled project, which goes into production March 13.

‘I am hoping it is more of a docu-meditation or a docu-fantasia – a hybrid of documentary and what-not,’ the director explains. ‘For the most part, I am treating this like a feature-length fiction work in the sense of how I am approaching it and scripting it out.’

The 75-minute film, which looks at Winnipeg from its director’s unique perspective, was commissioned by The Documentary Channel director of programming Michael Burns as part of The City of My Dreams, a new series of documentaries by top Canadian filmmakers. More names will soon be announced.

‘Guy is one of the two or three best directors in the country,’ says Burns, who collaborated with Maddin last year on the short film My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a tribute to Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, written by and starring his daughter, actress Isabella Rossellini. ‘I am extremely excited to work with him again.’

Maddin admits that, initially, the idea of making a feature-length documentary was daunting.

‘I was pretty scared,’ he says. ‘But then all of a sudden I realized that what I have really enjoyed most in my career is doing things that I was least likely to do. I shot a ballet in the past and I don’t even go to the ballet. I learned a lot from the sheer terror.’

The film will be shot on 35mm and incorporate archival footage, animation, and reenactments. The budget is $600,000, with funding from The Documentary Channel, Manitoba Film & Sound, CTF and tax credits.

‘We believe it will have strong international sales, but we are not bringing on a distributor until later on,’ says Phyllis Laing of Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures, who is producing with Jody Shapiro (Saddest Music). Local boy John Gurdebeke, who cut My Dad Is 100, will edit, while no director of photography has been announced.

Maddin, well known for a highly expressionist style, promises to bring some of his trademark surrealism to this project.

‘Winnipeg is the place of my childhood, and when you think back to those earliest childhood attempts to make sense of your world, those memories feel very dream-like, so I want to recreate that dreamy feeling,’ he notes.

Additionally, he says the flow of time will play an important role in the film.

‘It seems to me that Winnipeg has simultaneously been around forever and also existed for such a short time,’ he explains. ‘I think I can show that by interweaving eras, fast-forwarding back and forth among them, then stopping to pause and lament things that mattered to me in the city that are gone. It is a chance to vent about how insensitive people are to their own histories and how important it is to remember your history.’

Maddin has another documentary hybrid in the works, a $1-million feature-length ‘docu-fiction’ called Ghosting, which is being produced by Rob Sauvey and Shawn Watson of Winnipeg’s Ocular Productions.

The film is loosely inspired by the life of ’50s singer/violinist Giselle MacKenzie, who was born in Winnipeg and went on to become Canada’s first exported TV star to the U.S.

‘It is her story, but also the story of the incredible mythologizing and occult powers of early TV – how hard it hit the wide-open eyes of North Americans and changed how they viewed the world,’ Maddin says.

The producers recently launched the project at CineMart at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and plan to raise financing from the international marketplace.

Maddin is also reuniting with producer Vonnie Von Helmolt and ballet choreographer Mark Godden, his collaborators on Dracula, for another dance film, this time based around Svengali, the cruel hypnotist in George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby who turns a tone-deaf girl into a singing star. The project is in development with CBC’s Opening Night.

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