Noam Gonick
| Noam Gonick | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 20, 1970 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| Alma mater | Ryerson University |
| Occupation | Filmmaker, artist |
| Notable work | Hey Happy!, Stryker |
| Parent(s) | Cy Gonick |
Noam Gonick, RCA (born in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian filmmaker and artist. His films include Hey, Happy!, Stryker, and Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight. His work frequently deals with themes of homosexuality, social exclusion, dystopia and utopia.
Gonick was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1970 to a Jewish family. His father, Cy Gonick, is a reputed Marxist economist and former member of the Manitoba Legislature. As a youth, Noam showed a strong interest in theatre. While in elementary school, he started a small theatre company composed of other children from his neighborhood. At 16, he lived briefly in Berlin, Germany, where he worked as an actor in an experimental theatre troupe. After returning to Canada, he met and began working with filmmaker Guy Maddin, who would have a seminal influence upon his early work.
Gonick attended and graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto, earning a BFA with a major in Film. He edited Ride, Queer, Ride (1997) a collection of writings on and by filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, who would prove to be another important influence on Gonick's filmmaking. In 2007, he was made the youngest inductee to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[1] He is currently President of the Board of Directors at the Plug-In Institute of the Contemporary Arts.
Gonick's first film was the 1997 short 1919, a historically revisionist depiction of the Winnipeg General Strike, as seen through the window of a gay oriental barbershop and bathhouse. MoMA selected the film as one of the best gay and lesbian films from the last fifteen years. His next film was the documentary Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight, narrated by Tom Waits and featuring Shelley Duvall. The film captures Maddin as he begins production on Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997). The documentary received acclaim on the festival circuit and went on to a successful life on television. Gonick would follow up with the experimental short Tinkertown in 1999, while also writing and developing his first feature, Hey Happy! (2001). The cult-styled film, set in the Winnipeg rave scene on the eve of an apocalyptic flood, was distributed in North America and Europe, and was listed in Artforum’s selection of best movies of the year.
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