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Film/Video COWARDS BEND THE KNEE with DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN'S DIARY WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2004, 7 PM $7 ($5 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM 
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COWARDS BEND THE KNEE
Begun as a 10-part peep show at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2003, Cowards Bend the Knee is now a video feature that fictionalizes a twisted mirror image of Maddin's own life. Set between a darkly shadowed sports arena and a two-way-mirrored beauty salon, the story offers up vengeful ghosts and uncontrollable extremities as windows into the unconscious. Casting himself as a hockey sniper falling under the spell of mother and daughter femmes fatales, the filmmaker unleashes sordid family secrets: "A lovingly self-loathing peek at myself, but only as I would have enough courage to look--through a cracked glass made foggy by hairspray." 2003, Canada, BW, video, 60 minutes.
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 Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary courtesy Zeitgeist Films |
This widely acclaimed masterpiece beautifully transposes the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic vampire yarn from stage to screen. With Zhang Wei-Qiang dancing the title role, Maddin has forged a sumptuous, erotically charged feast of dance, drama, and shadow, fringed with the expressionistic strains of Gustav Mahler. "Maddin's work testifies to the notion that the past knows more than the present and that silent cinema is a richer, dreamier, sexier, and more resonant medium than what we're accustomed to seeing in the multiplexes" (Chicago Reader). 2002, Canada, BW/color, 35mm, 75 minutes.
PAGES FROM A FILMMAKER'S DIARY: A FILM RETROSPECTIVE AND REGIS DIALOGUE WITH GUY MADDIN IS MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE REGIS FOUNDATION. SPECIAL THANKS TO IFC FILMS FOR THE PRINT OF THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD.