Biography

Guy Maddin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Herdis Maddin (a hair-dresser) and Charles "Chas" Maddin (grain clerk and general manager of the Maroons, a Winnipeg hockey team). Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg, working as a bank manager, house painter, and photographic archivist before becoming a film-maker. Maddin produced his first film in 1985, and since then his distinctive style of recreating and renovating silent film conventions and international critical acclaim have made him one of Canada's most celebrated directors. In 2003, Maddin also expanded his career to become an author and an installation artist.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

Films often imitate the visual look and special effects of the silent film era

Plots usually involve a series of complicated, entangled, unsuccessful love stories

Often uses motifs of sexual repression and errant perversity

Characters frequently suffer from amnesia, forgetting even their own marriages and loves

Many of his films are set in a mythologized version of his hometown of Winnipeg.

I've never bought that cliché that you should never take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I'm more of a person who loves his grandmother. I'm thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, you notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You're totally sucked into the story. You've been scared, moved, engaged, and then every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or a nose hair or that she's getting pretty wrinkly and that she's sitting on your foot, and then you go back into the story. I'm one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother.

I always thought that it was great when people told me that my films are impossible to put in a drawer. So I'd say: 'Oh, thank you', and they'd respond: 'No, that's terrible. You would be doing yourself a big favour if you worked in a genre.' And then they'd tell me I should work in science fiction, a genre I don't find much of a connection with for some reason, even though it has so much potential. To some extent, science fiction and horror seem so close together as an element of fantasy. But I still like my horror films scary yet slightly allegorical to a degree where I'm not sure whether I can figure out the allegory. If I can't figure it out, that's even better. But it has to be rooted in something that we all feel, whether we believe in saucers or vampires or not. We all feel those things but they are dressed up in the horror genre garb. I like that.