The NFB's Night Mayor, an interview with director Guy Maddin

Having wrapped shooting on Night Mayor, his commemorative short film for the NFB's 70th anniversary, director Guy Maddin took a few moments to talk to the NFB about the project, Winnipeg and the Great White North.

Q: Where did you come up with the idea for Night Mayor?

A: Whenever I accept these commissions, or invitations to make things, before I even hang up the phone there's some kind of impulse – an idea or notion I've learned I just can't shake. I never go, "Oh that's too dumb an idea." I've learned I just have to make it. When I was talking to Cindy Witten (Director General, NFB English Program), I got the idea of making a documentary – I guess it's not a real documentary because the person it's portraying doesn't really exist – but I would invent someone who's a tribute to the NFB and make a documentary about that person. Something was already playing in the back of my mind when I tried to politely decline the invitation, and by the time I finished talking to Cindy, I was pretty excited about doing it.

Q: What's the film about?

A:  The film looks at an immigrant from Bosnia to Canada, probably around 1939, which is the year the NFB was formed. This guy has simply invented his own primitive version of television… It draws on the power of the aurora borealis and is broadcast from Winnipeg, the centre of Canada. This guy is broadcasting little images and sounds of Canada for Canadians. Kind of like the NFB did from the get-go. So I just did a little documentary look at him and I plan on having him speaking over top of it about his hopes and disappointments.

Much like the NFB and the CBC and various other organizations that have tried to show Canada to Canadians for the longest time, as soon as this guy gets going he starts feeling the pinch of cutbacks and finally the government just shuts him down. It seems to be the trajectory of all such things and seems to be the one that I've heard of for the longest time about the NFB. It's a nice chance to show an ordinary Canadian at work at his daily routines and let him speak about it and somehow get something fable and fairy-tale like out of it. And just the wondrous work of the NFB and the obstacles that it faced from day one to get pictures out across this vast and thinly populated nation.

Q: I love that you're using hard science like the ability to harness the power of the aurora borealis in the film. Is that something you wanted to work around, or did you have the idea for the film first and that just fit right in?

A: The aurora borealis did come a little later. It was an idea from my production designer, Ricardo Alms. I was originally just going to make it music that was broadcast over telephone lines but we started talking and he was eager to get designing and building things and I didn't even have a script yet. It was his idea and it was a good one – it's visual and it sets us apart from America. The NFB has never been American. Which is the reason I never watched NFB movies as a kid – I liked my American movies and television.

Q:  Which is funny, because you seem to have strayed very far from that model…

A: It's been my passion to help this country mythologize itself. And I realized to my surprise when I, as an adult, revisited the NFB films that I was so bored by, that they did a great job of showing Canada to itself and mythologizing the country. There's an interesting mythology there – which is both fact and highly subjective history and highly subjective views of directors… So the NFB had been doing all those things that I long lamented Canadian film never did.

Q: So is setting your films pre-1930 your attempt to create a history for Canadians, to mythologize the country?

A: To go back and start again? I know there was a history there, it just wasn't recapitulated to subsequent generations with the same kind of verve and bravado reductive commitment to posterity that other nations do with their everyday histories. So filmmaking has always been a form of wish fulfillment or daydreaming for me. I pretend I'm going back in time and this time I'm recording it.

Q: Is this a film you would have made otherwise, or is it intrinsically tied to the NFB's 70th anniversary?

A: No. I tried to make something that I would have made anyway, but the specificity of the commission really pointed me in this direction.

Q: In the film, protagonist Nihad Ademi's hope is to unite the country with his images. In your opinion, can film be used to unite a country? How important is it to Canada's cultural identity that the NFB exist?

A: I don't know if film can unite a country but it can help a country find its identity, and its identity is just a perceived identity. It can help recognize itself when it looks in the mirror, the mirror being a movie, television or computer screen. It can help give it a sense of itself. Film can't overcome huge problems just by existing but it's pretty persuasive stuff. Having lived through the two Persian Gulf wars, you realize how powerful that stuff is.

I think in Canada's case, we probably have a stronger sense of what America's like than what Canada's like through the bombardment of American media. The NFB is pretty important in this respect, but not everybody watches NFB films. There's a tremendous archive there.

I've always made sense of my place in the flow of time and geographical place through pop culture, and the 20th century is the greatest record of pop culture that we have on archive. I'm always cross-referencing how old I would have been or my parents would have been during some huge event in history.

And it's all there, if anyone wants to dive into it – this tremendous archive of NFB films online helps Canadians get a better sense of where they've been and maybe realize they haven't come that far and shouldn't be so smug. I'd always assumed the Canadian film industry had made some huge strides over the past decades, but some of the movies I watched from the '40s and '50s from the NFB are better than anything I've seen come of out of this country.

Q: While we're on the subject, your love of Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman has created quite a buzz around that little film. We'll be featuring it this week in the Screening Room. What drew you to it?

A: That's maybe my favourite NFB film. It's such an unpretentious little thing. It's just an everyday Canadian doing his everyday thing and it's kind of lyrical and sweet. And it shows stuff in the background that the director could never have anticipated was going to be fascinating one day – a Winnipeg that's no longer there. For future viewers, a way of life that's no longer there.

Q: You've been quoted as saying that you don't feel you've gone far enough in your films unless you yourself are uncomfortable, that every film contains personal elements. Is that true of Night Mayor?

A: (Laughs) No. It's one thing for my own movies to get that self-indulgent, but I had a job to do here. I wanted to honour the Board and keep myself out of it as much as possible. The name Night Mayor is a tribute to my good friend Noam Gonick, who co-wrote My Winnipeg with me… or gave me so many of the myths of Winnipeg. He is the night mayor of Winnipeg. He's a filmmaker and an artist and he makes images that go out there that are defying people to shut him down. That's about as personal as it gets. I'm really inspired by Noam and his passion. It helps me. It's important to get out of bed in the morning with a sense of mischief. The only personal element of this film is that I drew some inspiration from my favourite Canadian filmmaker.

Q: For those who haven't seen My Winnipeg, how has living and working there inspired your work?

A: Winnipeg is a strange and enchanted place. So many visitors who come to my sets come away completely enchanted. And it really does seem like a little luminous sugar-coated city at times with some really odd things going on. And I'm always proud to be from Winnipeg when my guests are dropped off at the airport and they leave just shaking their heads. The city re-inspires me when seeing it through the eyes of foreigners.

Q: And what about your shooting style? I read that much of it resulted from various accidental happenings – you learned to use a camera from a cameraman who wouldn't get out of bed, etc.

A:  I just decided to make every accident a happy accident. I try not to learn anything. The only thing I've learned is to embrace all accidents. I shot this film like My Winnipeg. I didn't really have a script – just a treatment that I wrote and never looked at again. Ricardo built a set, assembled some props and we were just in a great location – a Winnipeg building that was almost 100 years old. People were wearing timeless work clothes and I just shot it.

Q: What's next for you? Do you have another project ready to go?

A: I have a feature I'm going to shoot later in the year. It's called Keyhole, or the Naked Ghost, and it's going to be a little fantastic crime film. A little film noir with some slightly mystical elements…