A moment with ... Guy Maddin, filmmaker

In early 2006, visionary Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin set out with an all-Seattle cast and crew to make a movie. That simple premise led to "Brand Upon the Brain!" a surreal silent film with a live orchestra, celebrity narrators and spontaneous sound mixing that has delighted the film festival circuit from New York to Berlin.

Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m., Maddin will present the film at the Cinerama as part of the finale of the Northwest Film Forum's Local Sightings festival. The film will be accompanied by an 11-piece orchestra and narrated by actor Karen Black on Wednesday and Maddin on Thursday. (In other cities, narrators/collaborators include musicians Calvin Johnson and Stephen Malkmus in Portland, and poet John Ashbery in New York.)

On what "Brand Upon the Brain!" is all about:

Boiled down, it's a childhood recollection film, which is emotionally true and poetically plausible. It's been vetted by lawyers and poets. It all adds up in every possible direction in the double entry bookkeeping of my childhood recollections. But also, since I had such a strange, gothic childhood, conveniently, it's a gothic teen detective mystery with blood throbbing through the entire narrative.

On how the project got started:

When I was approached by Gregg Lachow of The Film Co., I was given complete artistic control, but the conditions were that I had to use an all-Seattle cast and crew -- which was wonderful, like having an affair on all my old Winnipeg mates -- and I had to write a new script, and I had to write it soon. So I knew I didn't have time to write dialogue, and that meant making a silent film. I also knew that I wouldn't have time to write something completely new from scratch, so I knew I would be borrowing heavily from my autobiography. So I knew right then when Greg called me that I would make a childhood recollection film, and a silent one at that. And that it would be completely music driven, because of all the art forms, music takes the shortest route to the heart.

On his love for silent films:

There are still some things that I think silent films do better than talking pictures, and one of those is the childhood recollection film. I just think anyone in the act of remembering his or her earliest childhood is a poet, and that silent film is automatically less literal minded and more poetic than talking pictures.

On bringing "Brand Upon the Brain!" back to Seattle:

Seattle is one of my favorite cities. This showing here is really what I've been waiting for since making the movie. What a great movie-making community! It was my favorite movie-making experience of all time -- coming to Seattle for nine crazy days, working with a crew of crazy volunteers, working with a bunch of actors that I saw nude within minutes of meeting them! They just started changing in what I assume is a West Coast way, and you know, for this bug-eyed Midwesterner I found it very charming that people had a level of comfort that bordered on the pornographic, at least to a Lutheran filmmaker. After getting my heart rate back down I was really thrilled. Everyone everywhere I go asks me how I cast this film, and they're astounded when I tell them that everyone was just right there in Seattle.

-- Travis Nichols