TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL REDUX, Directed by Guy Maddin
Zeitgeist Films Acquires U.S. Rights to the 4K Restoration of Guy Maddin’s TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX)
Fresh Off Its World Premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival,
Zeitgeist to Open the Film Oct. 14 at IFC Center for a One-Week Exclusive Engagement, Guy Maddin In-Person for Select Screenings
American Cinematheque in Los Feliz, Calif., to Screen GIMLI Oct. 16, 18 and 20 at 10:00 p.m. Only
Zeitgeist Films and Films We Like in Canada present a brand new 4K remastering of TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX) by Guy Maddin, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The new 4K digital remaster was supervised by Guy Maddin using original printing elements provided by the TIFF Cinematheque Library and includes the replacement of a long lost scene. Maddin’s highly acclaimed first feature, released in 1988, is now regarded as one of the true cult hits on the midnight movie circuit. Zeitgeist will open Tales From The Gimli Hospital Redux on October 14 at the IFC Center for an exclusive week-long engagement. Maddin will be in-person at IFC Center for Q&As on Friday, Oct. 14 and Saturday, Oct. 15 (screening times to be announced soon). American Cinematheque in Los Feliz, Calif., will also screen the film on Oct. 16, 18 and 20 at 10:00 p.m. only.
Set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, Tales From The Gimli Hospital Redux is a dreamlike, elliptical film which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room “in a Gimli we no longer know.”
Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo, Co-Presidents of Zeitgeist Films, have been working with Guy Maddin since the beginning years of their company, starting with ARCHANGEL. “We think that Guy is one of the true geniuses we’ve met, as well as a wonderful human being. He’s very popular with our exhibitors and audiences will be thrilled when they see this magnificent restoration,” said Gerstman and Russo.
Along with TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX) Zeitgeist’s current release is Eva Vitija’s LOVING HIGHSMITH and the upcoming 4K restoration of THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT and the Mexican drama LA CIVIL.
About the Director
Guy Maddin is a Canadian filmmaker with numerous shorts and 11 feature films to his credit, including the Emmy Award-winning ballet film Dracula — Pages From A Virgin’s Diary (2002); The Saddest Music in the World (2003); My Winnipeg (2007); and US National Society of Film Critics Best Experimental Film Prize-winners Archangel (1990) and The Heart of the World (2000). He is also a member of The Order of Canada & The Order of Manitoba.
Guy Maddin’s body of work is as beautiful as it is confounding and delirious. He incorporates the language of past cinema, with which he is most intimately familiar from his countless hours of film viewing, and combines this with a pre-cinematic sensibility learned from the books he voraciously devours. A man of prodigious intellectual appetites, Maddin’s many interests and obsessions can easily be discerned in his work.
His first film, produced through the Winnipeg Film Group, was the haunting family fable THE DEAD FATHER. This brought him the recognition he needed to embark on his second film, the cult hit, TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL. This film played for months as a midnight movie in New York City and paved the way to perhaps his most delirious and insensible picture, ARCHANGEL. Certainly the most Iyrical of war films, ARCHANGEL is the story of amnesiac lovers skirting the northern frontiers of World War I, and its release brought Maddin the U.S. National Society of Film Critics’ prize for Best Experimental Film of the Year.
Following this triumph was Maddin’s first work in color, a story of repression and unnatural couplings entitled CAREFUL. The film opened Perspectives Canada at the 1993 Toronto Festival of Festivals and it went on to screen at the Tokyo and New York Film Festivals.
In 1995 Maddin created a short filmic prose-poem based on the work of Belgian charcoalier ODILON REDON. It was organized by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who also invited such directors as Jonathan Demme, Jane Campion and Tim Burton. The resulting production won a Special Jury Citation at the Toronto Film Festival and played festivals from New York to London to Telluride, Colorado.
Also in 1995, Maddin was the recipient of the Telluride Medal for Life Time Achievement at the Telluride Film Festival. He is the youngest person ever to have been awarded this honor.
In 2000, along with other notable Canadian filmmakers, Maddin was commissioned to make a six-minute “prelude” for the Toronto International Film Festival in celebration of their 25th anniversary. The resulting short film, THE HEART OF THE WORLD, was proclaimed by many festival-goers and critics to be the best film of the entire festival and became the most acclaimed film to date of Maddin’s career. It won a special award from the National Society of Film Critics as the best experimental film of the year, won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival for best narrative short, and was voted one of the ten best films of 2001 by both J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, and A.O.Scott of The New York Times, a highly unusual honor for a six-minute film. In 2002 Maddin filmed the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s performance of Mark Godden’s ballet “Dracula” for Canadian TV and the resulting film, DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY won an International Emmy award and was released theatrically to great acclaim.
In 2003 Guy Maddin premiered the video peep-show installation COWARDS BEND THE KNEE in Toronto. COWARDS BEND THE KNEE was then released as a feature film in 2004.
Also in 2004 Maddin directed THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro (author of The Remains of the Day). Starring Isabella Rossellini and Kids in the Hall’s Mark McKinney, the film is set during the Depression in a Winnipeg brewery where a legless matriarch holds a contest to see who can create the world’s most melancholy music.
In 2006 Maddin premiered BRAND UPON THE BRAIN, a silent film that chronicles the mysterious happenings at a lighthouse orphanage run by an oppressive matriarch. The film screened at several international film festivals accompanied live with foley artists, an orchestral score, and a celebrity narrator. The same year he also made a short film with Isabella Rossellini in tribute to her father Roberto, entitled MY DAD IS 100 YEARS OLD.
In 2007 Maddin directed MY WINNIPEG, an experimental documentary and semi-autobiographical account of Maddin's childhood and the history of his hometown. And at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2009 he premiered a new short film, SEND ME TO THE ’LECTRIC CHAIR starring Isabella Rossellini, which was projected on the side of an office building.
Maddin has been a regular contributor to Film Comment. He has curated at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and has taught at the University of Manitoba.
TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX)
A Film by Guy Maddin
Featuring: Kyle McCulloch, Michael Gottli, Angela Heck, Margaret Anne Macleod, Heather Neale, David Neale, Caroline Bonner
1988 - 64 MINUTES - B&W - 4K - STEREO - IN ENGLISH + ICELANDIC
https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/talesfromthegimlihospital
About Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films is a New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes the finest independent films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with renowned film distributor Kino Lorber.
Zeitgeist has distributed early films by such notable directors as Todd Haynes, Christopher Nolan, Francois Ozon, Olivier Assayas, Laura Poitras, Atom Egoyan and the Quay Brothers. Their catalog includes films from the world's most outstanding filmmakers including Margerethe Von Trotta, Ken Loach, Guy Maddin, Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Yvonne Rainer, Andrei Zyvagintsev, Astra Taylor and Raoul Peck. Previous Zeitgeist Films releases in association with Kino Lorber include Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Connie Hochman’s In Balanchine’s Classroom, Blerta Basholli’s Hive and most recently Daniel Raim’s Fiddler’s Journey To The Big Screen and Eva Vitija’s Loving Highsmith.
Five Zeitgeist films have been nominated for Academy Awards and one, Nowhere in Africa, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Their films have been honored by festivals throughout the world with Grand Prizes at Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Tribeca, and IDFA in Amsterdam. The Museum of Modern Art honored Zeitgeist with a month-long, 20th anniversary retrospective of their films in 2008.
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