"I don't think i've ever met anyone from Manitoba"
This is the response by a professor at a a school of information when i was asked recently where i was from (after identifying the accent as "not british"). "That's not surprising" i replied "as a rule we don't get out much"
I've just learned that famous winnipeger and film maker Guy Maddin has a film out called My Winnipeg that is being celebrated as seriously weird and wonderful, full of his usual cabinet of dr. caligary meets woody allen.
Somehow, i think it would be ironic or just wrong to see this film in a theater outside of the beating heart of the center of canada - the place where, because of its urban culture but magnificent isolation, MacDonald's love to test its new ideas (anyone remember "macribs"? thought not).
So i must go home, now, and seek out a room projecting this film, a room filmed with others who grew up on weather identical to siberia (Maddin created a film called Archangel, afterall, situated in just as weird, no doubt, version of this Russian port town). I must go to a place where that room of people will swell with pride and recognition at a filmmaker finally putting the name of our starting point on the cultural landscape. People will ask "is that what winnipeg is really like?" and i'll say "oh yes" without seeing the film and with seeing the film. Oh yes.
No more to live in the shadow of Grand Forks as posted on the Nuclear Weapons map of War Games - most of the people in the US would not have known or visited Grand Forks - but winnipegers do. It's not only a missile silo: it's home of great cross border shopping. Before Free Trade.
No more to live in the shadow of Fargo - where that opening shot of that pontiac across the blizzarding highway, or the scraping of windows in the lonely parking lot is so well known it's in the bones. Oh no, now, we step out into the Main Attraction. A very weird main attraction, i bet. But there it is. There is no Paris/France, Paris/Texas. No multiple Springfields. No many Yorks. There can be only one Winnipeg. So there Fargo!
You go, guy maddin! Let's hear them say "winnipeg" at the oscars, eh?
Posted by mc at July 3, 2008 10:05 PM