Guy Maddin

Given his successful directorial career in film and theatre, and his reputation as a “brilliant Winnipeg fabulist” (The Time Out Movie Guide) it is somewhat paradoxical that Winnipeg director Guy Maddin’s 1978 degree from The University of Winnipeg should be a BA in Economics.

Maddin’s films have been screened at countless international film festivals, at the MOMA in New York, and at the Icelandic-Canadian film festival in Gimli, Manitoba.  He became the youngest director ever to receive the Telluride Lifetime Achievement Award, and his short film, Heart of the World, a visually lush, super-condensed four minutes of obsessions and melodrama that premiered at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival, was named top experimental film of the year by the National Society of Film Critics in the United States.

Films such as Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), Archangel (1990), Careful (1992), and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997) have earned him his reputation as one of Winnipeg’s leading filmmakers.

For his artistic energy, his passionate urge to create, his willingness to share his vision with others, and for his mentorship of a generation of aspiring Winnipeg filmmakers and artists, Guy Maddin was chosen as the recipient of the June 2001 University of Winnipeg Distinguished Alumni Award.