Guy Maddin and the NFB’s Night Mayor

Guy Maddin started production this week on Night Mayor, a short film he’s created for the NFB’s 70th anniversary.

Mr. Maddin was reacquainted with the NFB’s body of work when he began research for My Winnipeg. He was, “struck by how beautifully made these pictures were. I was instantly drawn to the earliest possible NFB films and kind of obsessed on them.”

When the NFB approached him to do this short, he headed to the archives once again. He saw this as an “opportunity to really comb through the titles, to attempt to understand my own response to the work, and to come up with some way of defining…the (National Film) Board’s meaning to me and my country.”

What resulted from this research was Night Mayor, a short film set in 1939. When asked about the storyline, Maddin said, “I don’t want to reveal too much about it right now. It’s a guy who has got this invention that he is trying to make Canadians aware of it. But it’s difficult to do so in Canada in an era where there is a little bit of radio and a little bit of telephone that is covering this big white country.”

The film is being produced by Joe MacDonald out of the NFB Prairie Centre in Winnipeg and is slated for release in the fall of 2009.

Stay tuned for more details…