Director: Guy Maddin
Writers: Guy Maddin, George Toles
Producer: Jody Shapiro
Cast: Sullivan Brown, Maya Lawson, Katherine Scharhon
International sales: Celluloid-Dreams

Guy Maddin cheated on his hometown and enjoyed every minute of it.

Manitoba’s internationally acclaimed expressionist filmmaker has previously shot all his films in the Prairie province that he calls home, and with many faithful local collaborators.

But that all changed in January 2005 when he accepted an invitation by The Film Company, a Seattle not-for-profit film studio, to shoot a feature in their city, with their cast and crew, and on their dime.

‘It was kind of like having an affair,’ admits Maddin, who won an International Emmy in 2002 for Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary. ‘I snuck out of town, keeping this way under the radar, and shot the film in nine days… I didn’t tell anyone… No one knew what I was up to.’

But with a TIFF2006 Special Presentation scheduled for the Sept. 8 world premiere of Brand Upon the Brain!, the resulting 95-minute black-and-white silent film, the secret is out.

‘It was exhilarating,’ says Maddin of shooting in a new locale with a different cast and crew.

‘It was akin to what American studio directors of the golden age must have gone through – they made a movie on one soundstage, hopped in a limo and showed up at another stage, where they were handed a script and started shooting.’

Maddin – who has had a long love affair with early cinema – didn’t settle for just a regular TIFF screening. He’s turned the presentation into a full-fledged production that harkens back to – if not goes beyond – another era.

The film is being screened at the 1,500-seat Elgin Theatre and promises to incorporate 11 Toronto Symphony Orchestra members providing musical accompaniment (composed and conducted by Jason Staczek); two foley artists in plain view supplying a stream of sound effects; a narrator (Toronto-based character actor Louis Negin); and even a pseudo-castrato performing a song at the film’s finale.

‘I knew a silent movie would be shunted off into some novelty ghetto, unless we made it special,’ explains Maddin, who screened his short My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a collaboration with Isabella Rossellini, at last year’s Toronto festival.

‘I want to give people the experience of the opening night at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre circa 1927.’

Producer Gregg Lachow, who opened The Film Company over a year ago, invited Maddin to shoot a film of his choice at the studio, which is run by a group of film professionals – from DOPs and production managers to costume designers, editors and composers – who are retained on modest monthly salaries to work on the studio’s six-project-per-year slate. Lachow raises private money to finance the lower budgeted films, and relies on volunteers to make the movies.

‘He hates the film industry and wants to make good films outside the system,’ says Maddin. ‘And I am all for anything that is kind of exotic like that.’

Another unique element to The Film Company’s manifesto is that it typically gives filmmakers only a few weeks to come up with a script and begin shooting.

Maddin begged for a month and quickly came up with the idea for Brand Upon the Brain! with longtime Winnipeg writing collaborator George Toles.

‘The film is equal parts expressionist horror movie, childhood reminiscence, teen detective serial and Grand Guignol reverie,’ says Maddin.

The story is inspired by Maddin’s childhood experiences in the lakeside community of Gimli, MB, where his parents briefly ran a small summer camp for foster children and orphans.

The story takes place on a small island where a mother (Cathleen O’Malley) and father (Todd Jefferson Moore) are charged with the care of a lighthouse, a group of orphans, and their own kids – 12-year-old Maddin (Sullivan Brown) and his sister (Maya Lawson).

Things start to go awry when mysterious head wounds begin to appear on the orphans, and a teenage detective (Katherine Scharhon) arrives on the scene to investigate.

Several overlapping love triangles emerge as the girl detective develops a crush on Maddin’s sister and starts dressing up as a boy in an attempt to woo her. Meanwhile, Maddin falls for the young female detective – while also becoming interested in her male alter ego.

‘It is about an episode in my childhood when my sexual interests started to ramp up and it seemed everyone else’s were ramping up, too,’ he explains. ‘There seemed to be so much pheromonal activity going on that you could barely breathe, the air at the lake was choking with it. It was a really horny time.’

Maddin did all the preproduction planning via e-mails with staff in Seattle, arriving in the city only a day before shooting began.

‘I would send them a series of scenes that were sketched out on recipe cards and scanned into the computer. Then they would send me back sketches,’ he explains.

Actors were cast via QuickTime files and videotape.

The film was shot on Super 8, and Maddin shared camera duties with The Film Company’s Ben Kasulke.

‘The look of the film is very nocturnal, with lots of deep shadows,’ says Maddin. ‘I wanted to suggest a horror movie atmosphere in an expressionist way. There is a really nice ratio of sunlight to moonlight in the movie.’

He says his experience filming in Seattle was hectic but rewarding.

‘Normally I hate shooting – it fills me with nerves,’ he explains. ‘But everyone on this shoot was there because they wanted to be – not for the money – so it was a real treat. The spirit of the entire project is so commie, so utopian.’