49th San Francisco International Film Festival Honors Guy Maddin with the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award

March 28, 2006

San Francisco, CA—The 49th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 20–May 4) is awarding the highly inventive filmmaker Guy Maddin with the esteemed Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in celebration of experimental work that has been exciting critics and audiences for more than two decades. Maddin will be presented with the award prior to the showing of The Heart of Guy Maddin, a selection of his short films, on Tuesday, April 25 at 7:30 pm at the Kabuki 8 Theatres. Maddin will be interviewed by Steve Seid of Pacific Film Archive to introduce the selection and discuss each of the films in The Heart of Guy Maddin.

“Guy Maddin is an original storyteller of staggering imagination and humor,” says Linda Blackaby, director of programming. “We have been trying to get him to San Francisco each time we have shown one of his films, and we are thrilled he will be here this year to share his love of cinema and all its history with our audience.”

Guy Maddin continues to steadfastly make one-of-a-kind films inspired by an unbridled and perfervid imagination. The Canadian-born director began his career in the mid-’80s and since then has more than 25 films to his credit. Tales from the Gimli Hospital (SFIFF 1989) launched his unique style and eccentric obsessions into the world of feature filmmaking. He has since brought his inventive mark most notably to Careful (SFIFF 1993), Cowards Bend the Knee (2003) and The Saddest Music in the World (SFIFF 2004). In addition to making feature films, Maddin’s commitment to short films is impressive and he has on average directed one a year since starting his career.

The Heart of Guy Maddin will include the following short films:

My Dad Is 100 Years Old
Maddin’s newest film is a collaboration with Isabella Rossellini to commemorate her filmmaker father Roberto’s centennial. Rossellini plays all the parts—her father, herself and peers such as Hitchcock, Chaplin and Fellini—in this tribute to one of cinema’s greatest directors and to cinema itself.

Love-Chaunt Workbooks
In these short film blueprints from a lost Maddin feature, past loves and desires are polished to a fetishized gleam: fragmented, slowed to a crawl and unusually lurid. In Fuse Boy, a janitor’s lust becomes his nightmare. Women’s bodies, or parts thereof, make up the fevered scrawls of other workbooks.

The Heart of the World
Commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival, this furiously edited, breathless parody of silent Russian cinema is a tribute to the very heart of the world: KINO!

Odilon Redon or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Towards Infinity
Asked by the BBC to create a short film inspired by a favorite artwork, Maddin chose a charcoal sketch by French symbolist Odilon Redon. Emulating the smudgy, charcoal look of the original, Maddin feverishly retells the story of Abel Gance’s La Roue in five minutes (the original was eight hours).

Additional titles for inclusion will be announced.

Established in 1997, the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award recognizes the achievement of filmmakers who work outside of feature films in the realms of documentaries, shorts, experimental or animated works. Previous winners have been documentarians Adam Curtis (2005) and Jon Else (2004), experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill (2003), Latin American cinema pioneer Fernando Birri (2002), avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger (2001), animator Faith Hubley (2000), documentarians Johan van der Keuken (1999) and Robert Frank (1998) and animator Jan Svankmajer (1997).

Founded in 1957, the vanguard San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest-running film festival in the Americas. Held each spring for two weeks, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring some 200 films and live events with more than 100 filmmakers in attendance, presenting some 22 awards and attracting a diverse audience of nearly 80,000 people.

The 49th International runs April 20–May 4, 2006 at the Kabuki 8 Theatres, the Castro Theatre and the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco; the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley; and Landmark’s Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto, as well as several smaller venues. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org, call 925.866.9559 or visit the Main Ticket Outlet at the Kabuki 8 Theatres (1881 Post Street) or the Satellite Ticket Outlet at Virgin Megastore (2 Stockton Street). For additional information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415.561.5000.

San Francisco Film Society, presenter of the flagship SFIFF, is a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in all its glorious forms. In early 2006 the Film Society unveiled SF360, a broad-spectrum series of initiatives designed to showcase the extraordinary vitality, variety and innovation of the San Francisco Bay Area film and media scene, including www.sf360.org, SF360 San Francisco Movie Night, SF360 InSchool Cinemas and the SF360 Festival of Festivals.

The Film Society will present the first annual San Francisco International Animation Festival from October 11–15, 2006 and a new SF International Youth Media Festival in 2007.

First to 50: SFIFF will hold its landmark 50th anniversary in April 2007.