Co-presented with the University of Calgary Film Studies Program

Equal parts childhood reminiscence, Expressionist horror film, teen detective serial, and Grand Guignol reverie, Brand upon the Brain! is a cinematic spectacle from the unique mind of Canada's own Guy Maddin.

Guy Maddin lazes away his under-stimulated youth with his teenage sister on the mysterious island that one day, he stands to inherit. They share this island with a horde of orphans all living together in the lighthouse which doubles as the orphanage. Their every move is vigilantly watched over by Guy's overbearing and tyrannical mother from the top of the lighthouse while his father, a scientist and inventor, secretly works away in the basement morning noon and night.

When the new parents of recently adopted children discover mysterious head wounds on their young, teen detectives Wendy and Chance Hale - brother and sister sleuths known as the "Lightbulb Kids" - visit Guy's island to launch into an investigation. Guy is weak at the knees as he falls hard into his first hormone driven crush for Wendy, while Sis, is rosy cheeked and flushed with love for Chance, a love that must be kept hidden from Mother at all costs.

As the investigation progresses, it leads the kids into the darkest regions of revelation and repression and spins dangerously out of control as the terrible secrets of Guy's family are laid bare...

Inspired by the aesthetics and melodramatic flourishes of silent cinema, Central European literature and the desolation of his native Winnipeg, Guy Maddin has fashioned a career like no other. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Guy Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg, then earned his living as a house painter and as a bank teller. His love for silent films propelled him to produce, direct, edit and write his first film short, The Dead Father (1986), which dealt with the strained relationship between a young man and his father. He went on to write and direct his first feature length film, Tales from Gimli Hospital (1988), which played for a year at New York's legendary Quad Theatre and was nominated for a Genie award for Best Original Screenplay. His 1992 feature length film Careful, won Best Canadian Film at the Sudbury Cinéfest.

He has continued to create both feature length and short films, winning awards all around the world, including a Genie for his short The Heart of the World (2000). Maddin's films are unique, black comedies that have been described as playful, complex and a perfect mix of high art and camp. Maddin was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the 1995 Telluride Film Festival. His film My Winnipeg won the Best Canadian Feature awards at the Toronto International Film Festival (2007) and Toronto Film Critics Association Awards (2008).

A Super-8-cranking modern-day Eisenstein, filming plots that would make John Waters blush, Maddin embraces a cinema where expressionism, somnambulism and lurid sexual neuroses unite-and conquer!