About Guy Maddin and James Naremore
- Format:
- Virtual
- Genres:
This conversation pairs Canadian auteur Guy Maddin, a filmmaker whose work draws heavily from the influence of German Expressionism and film noir, and James Naremore, author and retired professor who is considered one of the preeminent media scholars of film noir. When deciding on a film to discuss in the greater context of the film noir genre, they both agreed on The Chase, a unique and surreal film which occupies the border between film noir and something else. Maddin and Naremore shared the IU Cinema stage during a Jorgensen Guest Filmmaker event in 2015 and this will be an expansion of that vibrant conversation, diving deep into a genre they both love. The moderated conversation will be followed by an interactive Q&A with the audience.
Guy Maddin
Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s singular body of work is as beautiful as it is confounding and delirious. His numerous shorts and 11 feature films incorporate the language of past cinema, with which he is most intimately familiar from his countless hours of film viewing, and combines this with a pre-cinematic sensibility learned from the books he voraciously devours. A man of extraordinary intellectual appetites, Maddin’s many interests and obsessions can easily be discerned in his work, including the Emmy Award-winning ballet film Dracula—Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002); The Saddest Music in the World (2003); My Winnipeg (2007); and The Heart of the World (2000).
James Naremore
James O. Naremore is Chancellors’ Professor Emeritus in Communication and Culture, English, and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. He has received numerous academic honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. His eight books and numerous articles cover impressive theoretical and critical ground, including film noir with his books More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (2008, University of California Press) and Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction (2019, Oxford University Press). He is considered one of the preeminent scholars in the field of media studies. Additionally, Naremore was instrumental in the early planning and establishment of IU Cinema.
