Audience, Withoutabox

Brand Upon The Brain U S A

Directed by: Guy Maddin
Starring: Guy Maddin
Country:U S A
Created:2006
Runtime:95 min.
Member: TheFilmCompany
Average rating: 5 by 1 users



Film Description:

Synopsis

Guy Maddin lazes away his under-stimulated youth with his teenage sister on the mysterious island that one day, he stands to inherit. They share this island with a horde of orphans all living together in the lighthouse which doubles as the orphanage. Their every move is vigilantly watched over by Guy's overbearing and tyrannical mother from the top of the lighthouse while his father, a scientist and inventor, secretly works away in the basement morning noon and night. When the new parents of recently adopted children discover mysterious head wounds on their young, teen detectives Wendy and Chance Hale - brother and sister sleuths known as the 'Lightbulb Kids' - visit Guy's island to launch into an investigation. Guy is weak at the knees as he falls hard into his first hormone driven crush for Wendy, while Sis, is rosy cheeked and flushed with love for Chance, a love that must be kept hidden from Mother at all costs. As the investigation progresses, it leads the kids into the darkest regions of revelation and repression and spins dangerously out of control as the terrible secrets of Guy's family are laid bare.

Forms: Experimental

Cast & Crew

Production

Amy E. Jacobsen (Producer), Gregg Lachow (Producer), Guy Maddin (Director)

Performance

Catherine Scharhon (Supporting Actor), Gretchen Krich (Supporting Actor), Guy Maddin (Lead Actor), Maya Lawson (Supporting Actor), Sullivan Brown (Supporting Actor)

Camera

Ben Kasulke (Cinematographer/DP)

Art Department

Nina Moser (Costume Designer), Tania Kupczak (Production Designer)

Post Production

John Gurdebeke (Picture Editor)

Music

Jason Staczek (Original Music/Composer)

Biography of the Director Dec 19, 2006 02:12PM
Guy Maddin, born and raised in Winnipeg, has directed nine features and numerous shorts, including My Dad is 100 Years Old - Isabella Rossellini's tribute to her late father Roberto - which played at last year's TIFF. The features include The Saddest Music in the World (2003), also with Rossellini, and the television ballet Dracula - Pages from a Virgin's Diary, which won an International Emmy for Best Performing Arts Program in 2002. Maddin, who won the prestigious Telluride Silver Medal for life achievement in film back in 1995, and a U.S.National Film Critics Award for best experimental film for Archangel in 1991 and The Heart of the World in 2001, is also an author, a freelance film journalist and a teacher of film studies at the University of Manitoba. He has a BA in economics from the University of Winnipeg.

selected filmography of the director
2006 Brand upon the Brain! (feature)
2005 My Dad is 100 Years Old (17 mins)
2004 Sissy-Boy Slap-Party (6 mins.)
2004 A Trip to the Orphanage (4 mins)
2003 The Saddest Music in the World (feature)
2003 Cowards Bend the Knee (feature)
2002 Dracula -- Pages From A Virgin's Diary (feature)
2001 It's A Wonderful Life (3 mins)
2000 The Heart of the World (5 mins)
1997 Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (feature)
1995 Odilon Redon (5 mins)
1992 Careful (feature)
1990 Archangel (feature)
19 Tales From The Gimli Hospital (feature)
19 5 The Dead Father (21 mins)
Director’s Statement Dec 19, 2006 02:11PM
The very centre of my childhood -- its mystical, imperious and explosive core -- was a long-running battle between my mother and my older sister over her freshly blooming adolescence. The two never put this issue into specific words, but that's what all the trouble was about - you could tell. They might have been arguing about hairdos or hemlines, but it was really the presence in the house of a new, young adult with a will of her own, that really placed these two females in violently opposing positions. I knew any childhood remembrances would have to be built around this war. I've wanted to do a silent film with live music for a long time, really give the people what they used to get all the time in the twenties, the real Grauman's Chinese Theater experience! A lavish spectacle for the masses, only more lyrical than what we're used to now! Piers Handling of the Toronto Film Festival once bounced the idea off me, but it got forgotten for a while. An event like that is not cheap to mount. It's all in the timing. A festival has to want to do it and have the money. The timing was right this year: we have the screening in Toronto and a couple in New York.

Special Promo Video Clip


Brief introduction to Brand Upon The Brain.


Ratings

saskiawb
    5 Stars

i've seen excerpts, and they're amazing.

2 Comments about Brand Upon The Brain

saskiawb
Jan 02, 2007 05:13PM

Brand Upon the Brain sounds like a complex and fascinating movie.

MuchoMas
Dec 19, 2006 03:16PM

your stills are stunning.

Leave a comment about Brand Upon The Brain

Welcome,
Please login
Forgot Password?
Register for Free
Recently Visited