MY WINNIPEG

I will revisit for one last time the streets of Winnipeg - my Winnipeg - and locate for the viewer the magic spots that I cherish, where one can merely point a finger and the past will come springing up, like so much artesian well water. There is something strange, something dreamy going on here, where pedestrians would rather use back lanes than front streets; where our homeless hide en masse on the rooftops of abandoned skyscrapers; and where a strange civic law requires you to admit for a night any
former owner or resident of your current home. By wending my way though the very birthplaces of my personal mythologies, by attempting to understand the very nature of memory even while it fabricates what turns out to be an illusory Winnipeg for itself, and by facing down, in a series of singular domestic experiments, the possessive power of my own family, perhaps I can unlock the mysterious forces that occultly bind many a human heart to the past. Perhaps I can finally define for myself the true meaning of «home». And make the shackles that bind me here simply fall away. (Guy Maddin)