Madcap Winnipeg director Guy Maddin's latest unique offering, Brand Upon the Brain!, will have its sole screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday.

Live musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a narrator, foley (sound effects) artists, and a castrato will accompany Maddin's presentation of the black-and-white silent film.

The eccentric filmmaker is also in Toronto to promote the world premiere of world premiere of Nude Caboose, an erotic short that was shot entirely on a cell phone.

Maddin sat down with eTalk's David Giammarco to share some of the childhood memories he brought to life in this semi-autobiographical film.

David Giammarco: What possessed you to do this film? First of all, describe the film to the audience.

Guy Maddin: We'll have members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra there accompanying my silent film. We'll have three of the best foley artists, those are people that make sound effects for movies, working alongside the orchestra.

These people have done everything from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket to Beerfest -- they do sound effects for everything. They come with excellent credentials. I have a narrator, which is kind of borrowing from an old Japanese silent movie tradition where a narrator will sometimes comment on or even come up with a countertext against the movie. And I have maybe the last castrato singing on earth, performing from a lower seat, a couple of haunting lovely little songs from the gods.

Then in plot terms, the story is drawing on huge chunks of my childhood reminiscences, but it's a teen detective story set in an orphanage on a little island with a lighthouse. ...I think it's the truest film I've made, the most psychologically true movie I have ever made. I think the people in it, as horribly and as touchingly as they behave towards one another, I think it's the most accurate reflection of family life as I know it.

Giammarco: How long have you had this idea brewing inside of you?

Maddin: I'm a real nostalgia-phile, so every now and then I've looked at photographs of Hollywood premieres in the 1920s and how glamorous they looked. Ever since I learned that silent movies used to be accompanied not just by tinkling pianos but by full orchestras, I always kind of entertained the notion.

Then about six years ago (Toronto film fest co-director) Piers Handling suggested that maybe I should do one for TIFF one day, so that really planted a seed.

I instantly dismissed him ... but then I got an opportunity a year ago to make a film in Seattle. A producer, Gregg Lachow, said he was approaching me with a film project, pre-financed, and I could choose whatever project I wanted total artistic freedom, he wouldn't interfere with me. He runs this kind of utopian visionary film studio down there, they churn out a lot of low-budget movies but they pride themselves on complete artistic freedom. ... They approached me, but with the condition that I start almost immediately. I didn't really have time to write dialogue for a hastily written script, but I had this story brewing -- my own story basically, the story of my life -- so I just disgorged it and put it on film.

Giammarco: The film is semi-autobiographical -- but what parts did you really exaggerate?

Maddin: It's the oddest thing. I was sitting around with the foley artist during rehearsal the other day -- it was the parts that seem really exaggerated that aren't. There'd be scenes like where my grandfather's dead body is prepared for burial by his wife and his daughter (my mother) -- and then buried in a watery grave because it was flood season in Manitoba. People in the family actually had to stand on the coffin to sink it under water.

It seems rather odd, an odd way to keep the memory of your father down, or to keep him in his place after death, but it wasn't a metaphor, it was just something that happened. ... Ever since I picked up a movie camera and started thinking about my own childhood, I realized that I had just come out of a melodramatically scripted childhood and that I didn't really have to dial up anything. In some cases (I had to) even dial down some things to make them seem more plausible.

Giammarco: Really? What are some of the things you felt that people would not believe.

Maddin: I don't want to come across as too self-pitying ... it may not seem like this to the people who watch this movie, but I have some feelings of consideration for my family members so I kept some things out.

Giammarco: This is a whole new way of presenting a movie. Are you thinking of taking this on the road?

Maddin: I'd like to take it on the road as much as possible. It will be a little bit different in each place. My good friend Louis Negin is the narrator in this case. When it plays in New York next month at the New York Film Festival, Isabella Rossellini will be the narrator. It's the kind of film where you can plug in, instead of the silent movie intertitles that are there now in English, you can plug them in any language, get a narrator in any language, then a live orchestra in any city, and you employ local foley artists. It is a little pricey to mount each time ... but the event seems to really make it worth it. I don't know about a lengthy tour, but there are a few festivals that can afford it, if they like it, I hope they do.

Giammarco: Tell me about the significance of the title 'Brand Upon the Brain!'?

Maddin: I know it sounds kind of ambiguous because a lot of people think of brand products, but I want people to remember what the word "brand" really originally meant - it was a simple braiding iron and brand products are branded in that fashion. I've always just thought of that expression, I don't even know if I heard it, or dreamt it or whatever, but the "brand upon your brain," a sizzling brand upon your brain is just any kind of memory you'll never forget, you'll take it to your grave. There's just a few memories in this movie that have left their sizzling sensations on my convolutions. Gosh, with any luck I'll leave a few for the viewers too.

Giammarco: Sounds like there is more for a sequel.

Maddin: Yeah, I'm daydreaming about a soap opera.