Just so happens that the San Francisco International Film Festival is on right now. So far I have seen three movies and am going to my fourth. The movie I want to talk about is "My Winnipeg", Guy Maddin's homage to his/our city. I was particularly impressed at the mention of the "Winnipeg Coincidence". Now I can't remember if that was something Guy Maddin told us in his introduction or if that was actually in the movie. It was the typical "Winnipeg Coincidence" that I was even at the movie with my sister. Just the fact that my sister and I are both coincidentally living in the Bay Area. I knew about the film festival but didn't know about the movie until I was buying tickets for another movie and the description for "My Winnipeg" was in the description for the movie I was buying tickets to. Who would have thought that I would have ever seen a movie about Winnipeg in San Francisco with my sister. We checked out the audience for familiar Winnipeggers, but didn't see any. I guess Guy Maddin was the only one. The Q&A after was awesome. Guy Maddin could seriously do a spoken word which could possibly rival Henry Rollins. Seriously.
Running into other Winnipeggers in random cities is part of the "Winnipeg Coincidence". When I moved to Oklahoma, I ran into one on my first day. We would have never have known each other because we were in completely different graduate departments. I also ran into this same person when I my sister was visiting. I could think of a myriad of other examples, but I have already broken my rule of making really short blog posts. Oh well.
06 May 2008
I feel like I need to add some post scripts to this post that I forgot to add earlier. I was wondering if maybe only Winnipeggers will enjoy 'My Winnipeg'. Just like Coupland's "Souvenier of Canada", nobody really gets it unless they have an intimate connection to Canada. Although I must say the audience seemed to like it, but I think they were serious Maddin fans.
More on the "Winnipeg Connection" I could probably think of a million of these. I was visiting a friend of mine in Victoria, BC, where she had recently moved. We were just walking downtown and just happened to a guy we went to undergrad with in Manitoba. The "Winnipeg Connection"!
3 comments:
"One Great City" was the first song that I played in my english listening comprehension class, for my first year students here in Nice.
They uniformly hated it.
That's really too bad! That's a great song.
Hi I came here via Rarebirds.
I am also a transplanted Winnipegger. I have these concidences happen to me all the time. The oddest is that I found my best friend from kindergarten online and when we emailed to say "Where are you?" We were both living here in BC! It's great because we're like a piece of home for each other.
I think it's a wonderful place to be from and I can tell a winnipegger from 50 years. My husband saw me do it once. We belong to a community garden and he introduced me to another gardener. I said to the guy "You're from Winnipeg right?" and they both wanted to know how I knew. It was just everything about him screamed Winnipeg!!
Anyway, thanks for the post. It's good to know other people experience this sense of wonder and kinship with folks from our home town.
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