Night Mayor

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Night Mayor

2009

Directed by Guy Maddin

Winnipeg, 1939: Bosnian immigrant Nihad Ademi conceives of a way to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis in order to broadcast imagery of his vast and beloved adopted land from coast to coast to coast.

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Jay D 's Watching
Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★½

Probably plays a bit better if you're familiar with the ever-changing battleground that is Canadian arts funding (which includes the NFB, who produced this particular short), but even if you're not, there's still a juicy slice of alternate history/immigrant experience as parable here, mixed with a dollop of tragically weird science and lovingly crafted by Maddin and his team of wizards.

Gui
Review by Gui ★★★★ Liked

With a short runtime, Guy Maddin creates a beautiful black and white film which really transports us to the the 1930's and 40's in a genius and subtle way. The small plot is as inventive as many of his films, when an immigrant finds a way to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis in order to broadcast strangely beautiful and universal imagery. The subtext around immigration and Canadian politics is present as in many of Maddin's works, but perhaps slightly stronger and therefore more distracting than in most. It's still highly engaging and technically a spectacle. The overlapping narration with the eerie score, plus the unique editing of the imagery, give this film and unnatural and uncanny visage. Definitely a must watch for all Maddin fans.

brotherdeacon
Review by brotherdeacon ★★★½

Somewhere alongside Paracelsus, Nikola Tesla and Nokomis (Daughter of the Moon), Guy Maddin's inventor Nihad Ademi and his immigrant family create mechanical poetry to harness rhizome sap from the knees of wolverine kitts, as well as images from the Aurora Borealis' ticker-tape parade cake-walking the sky route above Peguis, Manitoba. Mostly it looks as it sounds, which is like titanium grass being mowed before dawn. Similarly to most false truths, Nihad Ademi runs afoul of the more judicial population (ones with uniforms and coronation sashes) of his adopted land-locked Province, leaving him and his family to practice a more clandestine method so as to amaze their new brothers and sisters of the Robertson Davies laboratory subscription base. But, don't you…

lontracinefila
Review by lontracinefila ★★★★

uma mistura de experimentalismo, surrealismo, documentário e muito mais. diferente de muitos filmes experimentais que eu havia visto esse me surpreendeu positivamente de ter falas durante o que faz ter várias interpretações. em muitos momentos me lembrou Iron Man do Tsukamoto e em outros Pi do Aronofsky. simplesmente fantástico

Timcop
Review by Timcop ★★★

You mean this has a crazy scientist dad, who’s obsessed with the sky, and he builds a machine to harness the power of it in some way, and then his project is shut down by the government? Someone needs to call Kate Bush so she can get started on Cloudbusting Part II ASAP.

jrhovind
Review by jrhovind ★★★½

“He invented a kind of natural television, which converted the music made by the aurora borealis into moving pictures.” Guy Maddin’s delirious short (can he make any other kind?) about Nihad Ademi, an inventor and Bosnian immigrant who believes that the lights of the nighttime sky holds the answers to all our questions. As he and his children pursue frenzied work in his laboratory, he finds nothing short of life itself emerging from these spectral lights, until “images of everyday life, for everyday people” are beaming all across Canada; “ordinary things combined and made miraculous” fill people’s television screens with intimate images of their countrymen and clog up the nation’s radio waves. His utopic dream becomes a sort of intrusive…

Travis
Review by Travis ★★★★½ Liked

"I swear my father got all his inspiration by yelling at bushes" might be the most Guy Maddin line I've ever heard...

Steve Carlson
Review by Steve Carlson ★★★ 4

Interesting, as Maddin tends to be, but the digital video of this era just doesn't work with his aesthetic. (See also: Keyhole.)

Michael Clawson
Review by Michael Clawson Liked

Guy Maddin might be from another planet. I just don’t know how else to explain how truly, beautifully bizarre his work is. Him and Peter Tscherkassky, they just can’t be from around here.

Chris Hormann
Review by Chris Hormann

There are few directors whose work is unmistakable from its opening frames as Guy Maddin. Maddiningly Maddinesque.

Raymond Alexander
Review by Raymond Alexander ★★★½ Liked

I love how Maddin is just able to create these unique visions that seem to reference an earlier style of filmmaking.