There is a simple explanation for the quietness which has stolen over your favourite website in the past few days. I have been immersing myself in the films of Guy Maddin, for me the greatest living genius working in cinema. I first enthused about him here in the summer of 2008, when I saw Brand Upon The Brain! and I am now, through the magic of Het Internet, catching up with as much of his work as I can.

For all the echoes of early cinema, his films are sui generis. His is an absolutely individual talent, to the point where one could say a single shot could not be mistaken for the work of another director. Melodrama, ice hockey, sexual obsession, Winnipeg, dreams, amnesia… just some of the joys of a Guy Maddin film. And let us not forget that he can be deliriously funny.

Here is Odin’s Shield Maiden, a short from 2007.