''The Heart of the World'' is a

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

written and directed by

Guy Maddin Guy Maddin (born February 28, 1956) is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer, and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since completing his first film i ...

, produced for the 2000

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

. Maddin was one of a number of directors (including

Atom Egoyan Atom Egoyan (; hy, Աթոմ Եղոյեան, translit=Atom Yeghoyan; born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Egoyan m ...

and

David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...

) commissioned to make four-minute short films that would screen prior to the various feature films at the 2000 festival as part of the special '' Preludes'' program.Vatnsdal, Caelum. ''Kino Delirium: The Films of Guy Maddin''. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2000. Print. After hearing rumours that other directors were planning films with a small number of shots, Maddin decided that his film would instead contain over 100 shots per minute, and enough plot for a feature-length film. Maddin then wrote and shot ''The Heart of the World'' in the style of

Russian constructivism Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected deco ...

, taking the commission at its literal face value, as a call to produce a propaganda film. Even in its expanded, 6-minute version, ''The Heart of the World'' runs at a breakneck speed, averaging roughly two shots per second, a pace intensified by the background music, ''

Time, Forward! ''Time, Forward!'' (russian: Время, вперёд!, ''Vremya, vperyod!'') is a 1965 Soviet drama film directed by Sofiya Milkina and Mikhail Schweitzer based on a novel with the same name and a screenplay by Valentin Kataev. The film was p ...

'' by Georgy Sviridov.

Plot summary

The plot of ''The Heart of the World'' concerns two brothers, Osip and Nikolai, who compete for the love of the same woman: Anna, a state scientist studying the Earth's core. Anna discovers that the heart of the world is in danger of a fatal heart attack (which would mean the end of the world), and the brothers compete amongst the public panic. Nikolai is a mortician and tries to impress Anna with assembly-line embalming, while Osip is an actor playing Christ in the Passion Play and tries to impress Anna through his suffering. Anna is instead seduced by an evil capitalist, but has a change of heart and strangles the plutocrat, then slides down into the heart of the world, where she manages to save the world from destruction by transforming into cinema itself, the world's "new and better heart — Kino!"

Cast

Leslie Bais as Anna
Caelum Vatnsdal as Osip
Shaun Balbar as Nikolai
Greg Klymkiw as Akmatov

Awards and nominations

Genie Award The Genie Awards were given out annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to recognize the best of Canadian cinema from 1980–2012. They succeeded the Canadian Film Awards (1949–1978; also known as the "Etrog Awards," for sc ...

: *Win: Best Live Action Short Film"Inuit film Atanarjuat wins five Genie Awards". ''

Sudbury Star ''The Sudbury Star'' is a Canadian daily regional newspaper published in Sudbury, Ontario. It is owned by the media company, Postmedia. It is the largest daily paper in Northeastern Ontario by circulation. History The ''Sudbury Star'' began as ...

'', February 8, 2002.

Aspen Shortsfest The Aspen Shortsfest is an annual Oscar® qualifying short film festival held in Aspen, Colorado. The internationally-recognized festival began in 1979. In 2003, director Lionel Bailliu was given the Shortfest Award for the 2002 French short fil ...

: *Win: Best Cinematography

Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF), previously named Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film (french: Festival international du film fantastique de Bruxelles, nl, Internationaal Festival van de Fantastische Fil ...

: *Win: Special Mention – Short Film Miami Film Festival: *Win: FIPRESCI Prize, Best Short Subject

National Society of Film Critics Awards The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...

*Win: Best Experimental Film—the same award Maddin won in 1991 for ''

Archangel Archangels () are the second lowest rank of angel in the hierarchy of angels. The word ''archangel'' itself is usually associated with the Abrahamic religions, but beings that are very similar to archangels are found in a number of other relig ...

''.

San Francisco International Film Festival The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in i ...

*Win: Film & Video – Short Narrative, Golden Gate Award – Guy Maddin

References

External links

The Heart of the World at Zeitgeist
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Heart Of The World, The Canadian black-and-white films Silent short films Films directed by Guy Maddin Films shot in Winnipeg Best Live Action Short Drama Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners 2000 films Films scored by Georgy Sviridov 2000s English-language films 2000s Canadian films Canadian avant-garde and experimental short films