Jason Sondhi

Canada’s own Guy Maddin is delightfully weird. He is one of few successful feature filmmakers to continue to work in the short film medium, and is one of the few filmmakers period who can make narrative shorts that feel decidedly experimental.

I show Canada to itself, the sum of ordinary things, ordinary things made miraculous!

That’s Maddin’s signature aesthetic though, which we enjoyed a while back with The Heart of the World. Night Mayor combines similar techniques—the soft B&W, the love of projections, dissolves, and of course lightning fast cuts, to tell a similar tale of personal stories effecting the world. Oh, and big weird machines. Night Mayor is a story in service to Canada. Commissioned by the NFB to celebrate its 70th Anniversary, the short film relates the story of Bosnian immigrant Nihad Ademi and his lovely children, who learn to harness the power and music of the Aurora Borealis to project images across the country.

They call it “organic television” at one point, and soon people all over the country are getting weird projections through their television lines from Amedi. However the elements that he projects interact with the Aurora Borealis to morph and merge, creating strange new (and occasionally titillating) results.

Ultimately I’m sure there is a lot about this film that is escaping me, especially due to the disjointed nature of my viewing experience thanks to the NFB’s slow load times this morning. Therefore my textual insights are small and resultantly the story was a slight bore. However the visuals and creative energy present in the film simply do not allow your attention to flag. Overall another uniquely bizarre triumph for Canada’s great auteur.