Archangel
The Winnipeg Film Group presents the re-release of Guy Maddin’s Archangel
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Project Overview
IN THE SPRING OF 2008 the Winnipeg Film Group completed the striking of four new 35 mm film prints of Guy Maddin’s classic 1990 film Archangel. Filmed in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the summer of 1989, Archangel is a stunning and surrealistic tragedy of the Great War, and saw Maddin awarded the U.S. National Society of Film Critics’ prize for Best Experimental Film of the Year in 1991.
The Winnipeg Film Group is delighted and honoured to present the original film on glorious new 35 mm film prints to audiences around the globe to demonstrate why Archangel is considered a true Canadian film gem.
Literally a film like no other, Archangel, a weird, wild and extraordinary photo-play, is both melodrama and deadpan parody. With striking black and white cinematography and stylized set design, Guy Maddin tells a tragic tale of obsessive love during the Great War in the arctic Russian town of Archangel, a crystalline city of spires and onion domes. Here a Canadian soldier, a Belgian aviator and a Russian nurse, their minds clouded by mustard gas and the horrors of war, forget who they are really in love with.
“This is a great occasion for me, the fresh reprinting of a movie I enjoyed making more than any other before or since, and which has lain dormant for so long! This movie hearkens back to the days of my most primordial filmic obsessions and even I will be puzzled to figure out exactly who I was when I attempted to mount this thing. I would like to thank Monica Lowe of the WFG, the AV Trust and as always, Dave Barber, for the happy resurrection and screening of this, for me, most precious and personal oddity.” – Guy Maddin
For more information or to rent one of the new 35mm prints please contact Monica Lowe, Distribution Director at (204) 925-3456 ext. 103 or monica@winnipegfilmgroup.com
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible by funding provided through the Heritage Policy Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Produced with the assistance of the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.
