Guy Maddin

Brand upon the Brain!

Brand upon the Brain!

In the weird and wonderful supercinematic world of Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin, personal memory collides with movie lore for a radical sensory overload. This eerie excursion into the Gothic recesses of Maddin’s mad, imaginary childhood is a silent, black-and-white comic science-fiction nightmare set in a lighthouse on grim Black Notch Island, where fictional protagonist Guy Maddin was raised by an ironfisted, puritanical mother. Originally mounted as a theatrical event (accompanied by live orchestra, Foley artists, and assorted narrators), Brand upon the Brain! is an irreverent, delirious trip into the mind of one of current cinema’s true eccentrics.

Film Info

  • Canada
  • 2006
  • 99 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #440

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer
  • Narration tracks by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Guy Maddin, Louis Negin, and Eli Wallach
  • 97 Percent True, a new documentary featuring interviews with the director and his collaborators
  • Two new short films directed by Maddin exclusively for this release: It's My Mother’s Birthday Today and Footsteps
  • Deleted scene
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim

    New cover by Jason Hardy

Purchase Options

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New high-definition digital transfer
  • Narration tracks by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Guy Maddin, Louis Negin, and Eli Wallach
  • 97 Percent True, a new documentary featuring interviews with the director and his collaborators
  • Two new short films directed by Maddin exclusively for this release: It's My Mother’s Birthday Today and Footsteps
  • Deleted scene
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim

    New cover by Jason Hardy
Brand upon the Brain!
Cast
Erik Steffen Maahs
Grown-up Guy Maddin
Gretchen Krich
Mother
Sullivan Brown
Young Guy Maddin
Andrew Loviska
Savage Tom
Kellan Larson
Nettie
Maya Lawson
Sis
Todd Jefferson Moore
Father
Megan Murphy
Murderous sisters
Annette Toutonghi
Clara Grace Svenson
Baby mother
Katherine E. Scharhon
Chance Hale/Wendy Hale
Cathleen O’Malley
Young mother
Clayton Corzatte
Old father
Susan Corzatte
Old mother
Credits
Director
Guy Maddin
Screenplay
Guy Maddin
Screenplay
George Toles
Editing
John Gurdebeke
Music
Jason Staczek
Cinematography
Benjamin Kasulke
Narration written by
Louis Negin
Production design
Tania Kupczak
Additional editing
Cheryll Hidalgo
Costume designer
Nina Moser
Producer
Amy E. Jacobson
Producer
Gregg Lachow

Current

Brand upon the Brain!: Out of the Past
Brand upon the Brain!: Out of the Past
Every Guy Maddin movie creates the illusion of a secret history. His willfully primitive cut-rate spectacles seem like artifacts, reanimated bits of cultural detritus, but also like hauntings, the return of the cinematic repressed. From the start, Ma…

By Dennis Lim

Dash Shaw’s Top 10
Dash Shaw’s Top 10

The acclaimed animator behind Cryptozoo shares a selection of his favorite films, including works by Godard, Cronenberg, and Almodóvar.

Marcel Dzama’s Top 10
Marcel Dzama’s Top 10

The Winnipeg sculptor, painter, and collage artist Marcel Dzama’s eclectic choices for his top ten range from avant-garde underwater shorts (Painlevé) to noir (The Third Man) to New Wave (The Fire Within) to contemporary experimental (Guy Maddin).

Gone to Pompidou: A Few Questions for Guy Maddin
Gone to Pompidou: A Few Questions for Guy Maddin
Our favorite Manitoban, Guy Maddin, cheerfully grim chronicler of storybook psychosexuality and charmingly modest self-mythologizer, is in Paris now for a special event. Though just fifty-three and very much still working, the filmmaker is the subjec…