Film Forum

This special program of films was personally selected by Guy Maddin for all-new scores composed and performed by The Flushing Remonstrance, NYC’s premier group devoted to live film accompaniment. His 2003 autobiographical peep show melodrama COWARDS BEND THE KNEE is presented here along with three rare shorts — Odin’s Shield Maiden and world premieres of Trumpet Island Host Séance and Workbooks: Chimney/Rooster/Zookeeper — all with live accompaniment.

COWARDS BEND THE KNEE (2003)
A 10-part penny dreadful, a peep show melodrama, loosely conceived around the filmmaker’s autobiography, with an aesthetic that is one part vampire serial, one part psycho fever-dream. The director’s trademark themes — lust, revenge, guilt, incest, ice hockey — are luridly illustrated as the action moves breathlessly from a shadowy hockey arena to a beauty parlor that triples as a bordello and a clandestine abortion clinic. The film’s anti-hero — a hockey player named Guy Maddin — is a lovelorn, lily-livered coward, so desperate to please his beloved that he will lop off an appendage to win her heart. Maddin describes the film as “completely autobiographical.”

Trumpet Island Host Séance (2016) – World premiere!
In his Séances, Maddin directed his actors to channel the spirits of lost and silent films (here reimagining Tom Terriss’ 1920 drama TRUMPET ISLAND), with the footage subsequently manipulated for ectoplasmic effect and spiritual turbulence.

Workbooks: Chimney/Rooster/Zookeeper (1997) – World premiere!
The Workbooks are all-new short films created by Guy Maddin from footage shot for two unfinished films, The Cock Crew and Maldoror Tygers (adaptations of works by Herman Melville and Comte de Lautréamont), yielding a chimera of toil, lust, chimney sitting, poultry, zoos, and erotic disquietude.  

Odin’s Shield Maiden (2007)
In this mystical account of a tragic accident, the shield maiden of Gimli yearns for the drowned fisherman Mundi, aided by her acolytes in mourning.

Total run time: approx. 95 minutes

Reviews

"What an unearthly experience, these new scores!
The flow! The darkness! The beauty!
A dreamy-dream-dream!”
- Guy Maddin

On COWARDS BEND THE KNEE:

“MADDIN’S MASTERPIECE. An evocation of forbidden desire and monstrous repression.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“PSYCHOTICALLY INVENTIVE. Film autobiography at its most hilariously creative…a formidable addition to the ever-evolving Maddin oeuvre.”
– Variety

“It’s a comedy, it’s a 1920s silent movie. It is practically indescribable. And it is pure genius.”
– New York Daily News

"Lurid, tawdry and untoward entertainment from Canada's reigning mad genius.”
– John Anderson, Newsday

“Deliriously over-the-top blend of operatic melodrama, recycled Greek tragedy, motifs pilfered from film noir, and silent-film conventions”
– Film Journal International