The Heart of the World (2000)

Directed by

Guy Maddin

Genre

science fiction, comedy, romance

Country

Canada

Runtime

6 min

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 102 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A propaganda film made for a film festival, it packs the plot of a feature into six minutes. The story involves a love triangle and a frantic race to save the world.

freneticoverwhelmingpropagandisticwhimsicaldizzyingenergetichyperactivechaotic

What happens

The Heart of the World is a Canadian short film written and directed by Guy Maddin, produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. Maddin was one of a number of directors (including Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg) 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. 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, 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! by Georgy Sviridov. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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