21 May 2008

There's a good chance that if you live in the UK you'll not know the work of cult Canadian director Guy Maddin, a filmmaker who has worked in multiple capacities including director, producer, cinematographer, editor, production designer and actor but whose films remain largely unavailable on these shores. Probably the most widely seen, and that's still stretching the term given its TV screening was on Sky Arts channel, is his 2002 Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, a fascinating interpretation of Stoker's story told with a blend of dance and silent movie stylistics.

Maddin's 2006 film Brand Upon the Brain!, personal memory collides with movie lore for a radical sensory overload. This eerie excursion into the Gothic recesses of Maddin's mad, imaginary childhood is a silent, black-and-white comic science-fiction nightmare set in a lighthouse on grim Notch Island, where fictional protagonist Guy Maddin was raised by an ironfisted, puritanical mother. Originally mounted as a theatrical event (accompanied by live orchestra, foley artists, and assorted narrators), Brand upon the Brain! is an irreverent, delirious trip into the mind of one of current cinema's true eccentrics.

Brand Upon the Brain! has been announced for an August DVD release in the US by Criterion with the following features:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer;
• Optional narration tracks by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Crispin Glover, Guy Maddin, Louis Negrin, and Eli Wallach;
• The Making of "Brand upon the Brain!", a new documentary featuring interviews with the director and crew members;
• Two new short films directed by Maddin: It's My Mother's Birthday Today and Footsteps;
• Deleted scene;
• Trailer;
• A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim.

Brain Upon the Brain! will be released in August 2008 (exact date to be confirmed) at the SRP of $39.95.