The Dead Father (film)

Last updated
The Dead Father
Directed by Guy Maddin
Written byGuy Maddin
StarringD.P. Snidal
Margaret Ann MacLeod
John Harvie
Angela Heck
Rachel Toles
Jill Maddin
W. Steve Snyder
CinematographyW. Steve snyder
Kathy Driscoll
Bob Russick
Production
company
Extra Large Productions
Release date
Running time
21 min
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The Dead Father is a Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin, and his debut film. The short film tells a surrealist story of a Son's feelings of anger, sadness, and inadequacy after the return of his Dead Father. The Dead Father is shot in black and white on 16mm film and features Maddin's usual use on the stylistic conventions of silent-era cinema.

Contents

Plot

The narrating "Son" presents the audience with three photo albums' worth of memories, recovered from the attic. One recounts the mania of his cleanliness-obsessed neighbour and another concerns his "inexplicable loathing" for bushes. But the Son wants to focus on the episode of his Dead Father who, immediately after death, returned to haunt his family.

This development seems promising at first (the Dead Father lies motionless on the kitchen table and in his widow's bed) but it soon becomes clear, as the Son puts it, that the Dead Father does not seem to be "dead in the traditional sense," with brief recoveries during which he makes "various vague requests." The Son resists at first, but then gives up and attempts to make small talk with his Dead Father and even share a meal. The Dead Father enlists the Son in errands but is disappointed at the Son's inability to fulfill his simple requests for fish. The haunting continues in this lackadaisical manner, and it becomes clear that the Dead Father is mostly spending his days at the home of a new and better family down the street.

The Son is soon distressed to find that his Dead Father has fallen sick, and the Dead Father appears driven to death by this illness (film scholar William Beard has suggested that this section of the film is a flashback sequence). [1]

The Dead Father sends the Son on another errand, to take his little sister to school, but in his habitual forgetfulness he doesn't and she runs off, getting lost. Finally, the Son returns home to find his mother coddling his frightened sister and is struck by the Dead Father for his irresponsibility. Angered at his sister for getting him into trouble, the Son assaults her teddy bears. The family continues to mourn and the Son discovers that his older sister's boyfriend, Cesar, has been sneaking in at night to sleep with her (due, perhaps, to the absence of the Dead Father). The Son is spurred to "reclaim [his Dead Father] once and for all" and sets out at night in search of the Dead Father.

The Son discovers that the bushes and yards in the neighbourhood are thick with corpses at night, and finally discovers his own Dead Father amongst these corpses. Taking out a spoon, the Son eats his Dead Father, digging into the flesh of his belly, until the Dead Father wakes and fixes the Son with a reproachful stare. The Son then helps his Dead Father recover from the ordeal. The Dead Father, seeing the problems he has caused for the family by his return, leads the Son to the attic. There, the two reminisce over photo albums and the Dead Father gets the Son to help pack the Dead Father away in a storage trunk as if in a coffin. The reluctant Son closes the lid.

Cast

Release

The Dead Father was produced with funding from the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council with a budget of about $5000. It was accepted into the 1985 Toronto International Film Festival. [2]

The Dead Father was released to home video as a bonus feature on the Tales from the Gimli Hospital DVD [3] and as one of four films featured on Isolation in the 1980s, a collection of historically significant films from the Winnipeg Film Group. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyle McCulloch</span> Canadian writer

Kyle McCulloch is a Canadian writer for the TV cartoon South Park, and is largely responsible for the show's Canadian culture themes. He will also occasionally provide the voice for one-time use characters, such as Gary Harrison in "All About Mormons". He was a story editor and writer on SpongeBob SquarePants. He wrote one episode in season 4, and wrote "A Day Like This" song for the 10th anniversary special Truth or Square. He returned to work on the show in season 9, but left again to work on Lady Dynamite. He was set to make his feature film debut writing and directing The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run along with Paul Tibbitt, who was originally set to return to direct the film, but they were later replaced by The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie writer, Tim Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy Maddin</span> Canadian director, screenwriter and author

Guy Maddin is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer, and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since completing his first film in 1985, Maddin has become one of Canada's most well-known and celebrated filmmakers.

<i>Cowards Bend the Knee</i> 2003 Canadian film

Cowards Bend the Knee is a 2003 film by Guy Maddin. Maddin directed Cowards Bend the Knee while in pre-production on The Saddest Music in the World, shooting entirely on Super-8mm film with a budget of $30,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Paizs</span> Canadian director, writer and actor (born 1957)

John Paizs is a Canadian film director, writer and actor. He is most noted for his debut feature film, Crime Wave, which was presented at the 1985 Toronto International Film Festival. He was the male lead and also wrote and directed the film.

<i>The Heart of the World</i> 2000 Canadian film

The Heart of the World is a short film written and directed by Guy Maddin, produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. Maddin was one of a number of directors commissioned to make four-minute short films that would screen prior to the various feature films at the 2000 festival as part of the special Preludes program. After hearing rumours that other directors were planning films with a small number of shots, Maddin decided that his film would instead contain over 100 shots per minute, and enough plot for a feature-length film. Maddin then wrote and shot The Heart of the World in the style of Russian constructivism, taking the commission at its literal face value, as a call to produce a propaganda film. Even in its expanded, 6-minute version, The Heart of the World runs at a breakneck speed, averaging roughly two shots per second, a pace intensified by the background music, Time, Forward! by Georgy Sviridov.

Noam Gonick, is a Canadian filmmaker and artist. His films include Hey, Happy!, Stryker, Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight and To Russia with Love. His work deals with homosexuality, social exclusion, dystopia and utopia.

The Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) is an artist-run film education, production, distribution, and exhibition centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, committed to promoting the art of Canadian cinema, especially independent cinema.

<i>The Saddest Music in the World</i> 2003 Canadian film

The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. Budgeted at $3.8-million and shot over 24 days, the film marks Maddin's first collaboration with actor Isabella Rossellini.

<i>Twilight of the Ice Nymphs</i> 1997 Canadian film

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs is a 1997 fantasy romance film directed by Guy Maddin. The screenplay was written by George Toles and inspired by the novel Pan (1894) by Knut Hamsun, with an additional literary touchstones being the short story "La Vénus d'Ille" (1837) by Prosper Mérimée. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs was Maddin's second feature film in colour and his first shot in 35 mm, on a budget of $1.5 million. As seen in Noam Gonick's documentary Waiting for Twilight, Maddin was dissatisfied with the filmmaking process due to creative interference from his producers.

<i>Archangel</i> (1990 film) 1990 Canadian film

Archangel is a 1990 comedy-drama film directed by Guy Maddin. The film fictionalizes, in a general sense, historical conflict related to the Bolshevik Revolution occurring in the Arkhangelsk (Archangel) region of Russia, a basic concept presented to Maddin by John Harvie. The film marks Maddin's first formal collaboration with co-screenwriter George Toles.

<i>Dracula: Pages from a Virgins Diary</i> 2002 Canadian film

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a 2002 horror film directed by Guy Maddin, budgeted at $1.7 million and produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a dance film documenting a performance by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet adapting Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Maddin elected to shoot the dance film in a fashion uncommon for such films, through close-ups and using jump cuts. Maddin also stayed close to the source material of Stoker's novel, emphasizing the xenophobia in the reactions of the main characters to Dracula.

<i>Tales from the Gimli Hospital</i> 1988 Canadian film

Tales from the Gimli Hospital is a 1988 film directed by Guy Maddin. His feature film debut, it was his second film after the short The Dead Father. Tales from the Gimli Hospital was shot in black and white on 16 mm film and stars Kyle McCulloch as Einar, a lonely fisherman who contracts smallpox and begins to compete with another patient, Gunnar for the attention of the young nurses.

<i>Brand upon the Brain!</i> 2006 Canadian film

Brand upon the Brain! (2006) is an avant-garde silent film directed by Guy Maddin and shot in Seattle with local actors. Maddin directed the film from a script co-written with George Toles, shooting over nine days and editing over three months, on an estimated budget of $40,000.

<i>Careful</i> (1992 film) 1992 Canadian film

Careful is a 1992 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. It is Maddin's third feature film and his first colour film, shot on 16mm on a budget of $1.1 million. At one point, Martin Scorsese had agreed to act in the film, as Count Knotkers, but bowed out to complete Cape Fear. Maddin pursued casting hockey star Bobby Hull, but ended up casting Paul Cox.

<i>My Winnipeg</i> Canadian film

My Winnipeg is a 2007 Canadian film directed and written by Guy Maddin with dialogue by George Toles. Described by Maddin as a "docu-fantasia", that melds "personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing", the film is a surrealist mockumentary about Winnipeg, Maddin's home town. A New York Times article described the film's unconventional take on the documentary style by noting that it "skates along an icy edge between dreams and lucidity, fact and fiction, cinema and psychotherapy".

Night Mayor is a 2009 short film by Guy Maddin, about a fictional inventor in Winnipeg who uses the Aurora Borealis to broadcast images of Canada from coast to coast in 1939, until the Canadian government shuts down his illegal project.

<i>Keyhole</i> (film) 2011 Canadian film

Keyhole is a 2011 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin, starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier and Kevin McDonald. A surreal combination of gangster film and haunted house film, which draws on Homer's Odyssey as well, Keyhole tells the story of a Ulysses Pick (Patric), who returns to his home and embarks on an odyssey through the house, one room at a time. Filming began in Winnipeg on July 6, 2010. Maddin shot Keyhole digitally rather than his usual method of shooting on 16mm or Super-8mm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gimli, Manitoba</span> Community in Manitoba, Canada

Gimli is an unincorporated community in the Rural Municipality of Gimli on the west side of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada.

Sissy Boy Slap Party is a Canadian experimental short film directed by Guy Maddin. Set on an island paradise, the film depicts a group of men who become caught up in a homoerotic apparent orgy of slapping after an older man warns them not to slap each other while he is away on an errand to buy condoms.

Odilon Redon, or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Guy Maddin and released in 1995. The film stars Jim Keller and Caelum Vatnsdal as Keller and Caelum, a father and son who compete for the affections of Berenice, a woman they have rescued from a train crash.

References

  1. ↑ Beard, William. Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Print. 18.
  2. ↑ Beard, William. Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Print. 17.
  3. ↑ Tales from the Gimli Hospital. Dir. Guy Maddin. Kino Video, 2000. DVD.
  4. ↑ Isolation in the 1980s. Dir. Guy Maddin. Winnipeg Film Group. DVD.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.