logline
Equal parts childhood reminiscence, Expressionist horror film, teen detectived serial, and Grand Guignol reverie, Brand upon the Brain! is a new cinematic spectacle from the unique mind of Canada's own Guy Maddin.

description
Guy Maddin lazes away his under-stimulated youth with his teenage sister on the mysterious island that one day, he stands to inherit. They share this island with a horde of orphans all living together in the lighthouse which doubles as the orphanage. Their every move is vigilantly watched over by Guy's overbearing and tyrannical mother from the top of the lighthouse while his father, a scientist and inventor, secretly works away in the basement morning noon and night.

When the new parents of recently adopted children discover mysterious head wounds on their young, teen detectives Wendy and Chance Hale - brother and sister sleuths known as the "Lightbulb Kids" - visit Guy's island to launch into an investigation. Guy is weak at the knees as he falls hard into his first hormone driven crush for Wendy, while Sis, is rosy cheeked and flushed with love for Chance, a love that must be kept hidden from Mother at all costs.

As the investigation progresses, it leads the kids into the darkest regions of revelation and repression and spins dangerously out of control as the terrible secrets of Guy's family are laid bare…

director’s statement
The very centre of my childhood -- its mystical, imperious and explosive core -- was a long-running battle between my mother and my older sister over her freshly blooming adolescence. The two never put this issue into specific words, but that's what all the trouble was about - you could tell. They might have been arguing about hairdos or hemlines, but it was really the presence in the house of a new, young adult with a will of her own, that really placed these two females in violently opposing positions. I knew any childhood remembrances would have to be built around this war.

I've wanted to do a silent film with live music for a long time, really give the people what they used to get all the time in the twenties, the real Grauman's Chinese Theater experience! A lavish spectacle for the masses, only more lyrical than what we're used to now! Piers Handling of the Toronto Film Festival once bounced the idea off me, but it got forgotten for a while. An event like that is not cheap to mount. It's all in the timing. A festival has to want to do it and have the money. The timing was right this year: we have the screening in Toronto and a couple in New York.

biography of the director
Guy Maddin, born and raised in Winnipeg, has directed nine features and numerous shorts, including My Dad is 100 Years Old - Isabella Rossellini's tribute to her late father Roberto - which played at last year's TIFF. The features include The Saddest Music in the World (2003), also with Rossellini, and the television ballet Dracula - Pages from a Virgin's Diary, which won an International Emmy for Best Performing Arts Program in 2002. Maddin, who won the prestigious Telluride Silver Medal for life achievement in film back in 1995, and a U.S.National Film Critics Award for best experimental film for Archangel in 1991 and The Heart of the World in 2001, is also an author, a freelance film journalist and a teacher of film studies at the University of Manitoba. He has a BA in economics from the University of Winnipeg.

selected filmography of the director
2006 Brand upon the Brain! (feature)
2005 My Dad is 100 Years Old (17 mins)
2004 Sissy-Boy Slap-Party (6 mins.)
2004 A Trip to the Orphanage (4 mins)
2003 The Saddest Music in the World (feature)
2003 Cowards Bend the Knee (feature)
2002 Dracula -- Pages From A Virgin's Diary (feature)
2001 It's A Wonderful Life (3 mins)
2000 The Heart of the World (5 mins)
1997 Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (feature)
1995 Odilon Redon (5 mins)
1992 Careful (feature)
1990 Archangel (feature)
19 Tales From The Gimli Hospital (feature)
19 5 The Dead Father (21 mins)

short bios of key crew members

producers
Gregg Lachow created The Film Company, a non-profit film studio. His own films include the Emmy-nominated short To Have and To Hold for PBS, and the features Money Buys Happiness, The Wright Brothers, and The Seven Mysteries of Life. Other films include Silence! a feature with all dialogue, music, and fx performed live onstage.

Amy E. Jacobsen Amy Jacobson�has a predilection for funny, offbeat independent films. In addition to producing the sci-fi rock-n-roll feature "Cosmic Ray," Amy has managed several short productions�including the award-winning 35mm comedy "Full Disclosure" starring Judy Greer and Brent Sexton. Her company, Timepiece Productions (www.timepieceproductions.com) is based in San Francisco.

cinematographer
Benjamin Kasulke graduated from Ithaca College with a B.S. in Cinema Production, including advanced study at the Filmová a Televizní Fakulta Akadmie Muzickych Umní, Prague’s National Academy of Film. Film collaborations include work with 33 Fainting Spells, Linas Phillips and Guy Maddin.

editor
John Grudebeke

art director
Tania Kupczak graduated from Oberlin College with degrees in Molecular Biology and Art History. She received her MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College, with an emphasis on Installation Art, Digital Media and Cyberfeminism.Tania shows her work in New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and cyberspaces in between.

costume designer
Nina Moser

composer
Jason Staczek is a Seattle-based singer/songwriter who has put out four albums since 2001. The last two, Carbon Glacier and Year of Meteors, were released by Nonesuch Records.

short bios of key cast members

Guy Maddin
Erich Steffen Maahs has been active as a Seattle actor for the past decade, and is a founding member of The Compound performance group. As a filmmaker, he created the award-winning short film, BlueCoatedStory.

Young Guy Maddin
Sullivan Brown

Mother

Sister

Wendy/Chance Hale
Originally from Seattle Washington, Katherine E. Scharhon has performed in many plays (including the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of “The Time of Your Life” directed by Tina Landau at the Seattle Repertory Theatre), Voice-overs, short films, and commercials. Katherine is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, and currently resides in New York.

contact info

Gregg Lachow
Producer
The Film Company
gregg@thefilmcompany.org
(206) 323-1889

Downloads

Press PDF
Image 1 {photo by Adam L. Weintraub - please credit}
Image 2 {photo by Adam L. Weintraub - please credit}
Image 3 {photo by Adam L. Weintraub- please credit}
Director Photo {photo by Adam L. Weintraub - please credit}