Tales from the Gimli Hospital

Set in a makeshift hospital that seems to exist somewhere between Scandinavia and what could be a parallel universe, Tales From the Gimli Hospital is Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's surreal, black & white first feature. The film cleverly uses its own low-budget origin as a strength by re-visioning ...more

Guy Maddin's debut feature establishes the otherworldly, unfamiliar quality that he obsessively cultivates in later movies, albeit in different forms. Dreamlike or nightmarish depending on your taste, this black-and-white reverie creates a world seemingly unencumbered by Maddin's self-consciousness. The dreary, timeless Canadian backwoods that the film is set in appears to have sprung intact right out of Maddin's id, which in turn seems to have been deeply influenced by folklore, myth, and, most ...more