Guy Maddin, Magnus Fiennes, Headraft Studio: Haunted Hotel
United Kingdom, 2022
Conceived and produced by BFI London Film Festival
Guy Maddin’s first venture into the world of augmented reality, Haunted Hotel sees the Canadian avant-garde filmmaker and artist explore the hidden layers of human nature. Drawing from Maddin’s personal archive of newspaper clippings, surreal paper worlds invite audiences to look through virtual peepholes into rooms filled with longing, seduction and betrayal.
Maddin approaches augmented reality from a filmmaking perspective, drawing inspiration from Silent-era films, and constructs eight three-dimensional collages of a multi-layered world that aspires to draw the observer ever inward. Each scene set to an intricate soundscape by acclaimed composer Magnus Fiennes, Haunted Hotel hosts familiar pop culture figures alongside ecstatic nudists from the 1960s or frightened film noir actors.
Guy Maddin is a renowned Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer, and installation artist, internationally acclaimed for films like My Winnipeg (2007) with Darcy Fehr, The Saddest Music in the World (2007) with Isabella Rossellini or Rumours (2024) with Cate Blanchett. Maddin’s video installations are strongly influenced by the aesthetics of lost Silent-era films. He won an Emmy Award for Dracula in 2002 and was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, in 2012.
