The Little White Cloud That Cried | |
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Directed by | Guy Maddin |
Written by | Lexi Tronic |
Starring | Breanna Rose Taylor Marcia Ferreira Eric Wood Lexi Tronic Teresa Braun Zsa Zsa LaBitche Sex Party Marty |
Cinematography | Evan Johnson |
Edited by | John Gurdebeke |
Production companies | Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art |
Release date |
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Running time | 13 minutes |
Countries | Germany, Canada |
Language | English |
The Little White Cloud That Cried is a German-Canadian experimental short film, directed by Guy Maddin and released in 2009. [1] A tribute to underground filmmaker Jack Smith's 1963 film Flaming Creatures , [2] it is a 16 mm film depicting a fantasia in which sea goddesses rise up out of the water to engage in an orgiastic battle. [1] Writer and performer Lexi Tronic described the film as "the story of religious battles in an androgynous world, where everyone is trans-tabulous." [3]
The cast includes Breanna Rose Taylor, Marcia Ferreira, Eric Wood, Lexi Tronic, Teresa Braun, Zsa Zsa LaBitche and Sex Party Marty.
The film premiered on October 28, 2009, at Five Flaming Days in a Rented World, a Smith tribute festival and conference in Berlin, [2] and had its first Canadian screening on November 28, 2009, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. [1]
It was subsequently named to TIFF's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for 2010. [4]
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.
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.
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.
Jack Smith was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer.
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.
Flaming Creatures is a 1963 American experimental film directed by Jack Smith. The film follows an ensemble of drag performers through several disconnected vignettes, including a lipstick commercial, an orgy, and an earthquake. It was shot on a rooftop on the Lower East Side on a very low budget of only $300, with a soundtrack from Smith's roommate Tony Conrad. It premiered April 29, 1963, at the Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
The 35th annual Toronto International Film Festival, (TIFF) was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 9 and September 19, 2010. The opening night gala presented Score: A Hockey Musical, a Canadian comedy-drama musical film. Last Night closed the festival on September 19.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey, Happy! is a Canadian science fiction comedy film, directed by Noam Gonick and released in 2001.
Stump the Guesser is a Canadian short film by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, which was released in 2020. A silent black-and-white film based on early Soviet cinema tropes, it stars Adam Brooks as a man who works as a guesser at the fair, but whose mindreading tricks suddenly begin to fail him; simultaneously, he meets a long-lost sister he never knew he had and falls in love with her, and sets out to disprove the theory of heredity in hopes of being able to marry her.