Playing with Memories is the first collection of scholarly essays on the work of internationally acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. It offers extensive perspectives on his career to date, from the early experimentation of The Dead Father (1986) to the intensely intimate revelations of My Winnipeg (2007). Featuring new and updated essays from American, Canadian, and Australian scholars, collaborators, and critics, as well as an in-depth interview with Maddin, this collection explores the aesthetics and politics behind Maddin’s work, firmly situating his films within ongoing cultural debates about postmodernism, genre, and national identity.

David Church is a PhD student at Indiana University. He has contributed to Film Quarterly, Offscreen, Senses of Cinema, The Encyclopedia of American Disability History, and several other publications.

David Church's profile page

“David Church has compiled the first-ever collection of scholarly writings on various Maddin films. … Church’s volume offers insights by scholars from the United States, Canada, and Australia, making it an international collection. That so many American film scholars have contributed to the book is indicative of Maddin’s stature in contemporary filmmaking.”

Great Plains Quarterly, Spring 2011

“This is an interesting, quite readable, and valuable collection of essays. The essays trace the gradual development of Maddin’s work, films marked not only by a set of recurrent themes and obsessions—sex, death, and violence—but also explorations of memory, distortion, and unyielding sadness."

American Review of Canadian Studies