At age twelve Noam Gonick directed Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in a local church basement. At eighteen he ran around naked on all fours in a Berlin bomb shelter, covered in vegetable oil performing with a skinhead Antoinin Artaud ensemble. He later spliced open his elbows while go-go dancing in a rusty cage and was forced to take up filmmaking as a second career. In between his chequered film school history, Gonick was a pioneer rave organizer in Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.
Born into a radical Marxist family in Winnipeg, Gonick supplemented his education by studying two great filmmakers: Guy Maddin and Bruce LaBruce. Gonick’s work on Guy Maddin became a celebrated film entitled Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight narrated by Tom Waits, which went on to win top awards at festivals worldwide (including Hot Docs! and the Blizzard Awards). This film, along with Gonick’s award winning 1919 (which won “Best Canadian Film” at the Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival), continues to screen in festivals, on television, and at major museums that have purchased Gonick’s work for their permanent collections.
Gonick created Psychic Saturday Night, the kitschiest show in the history of Canadian TV – a live psychic phone-in show, complete with dancer and a 300 lb. psychic. Gonick has worked as a producer for indie film guru John Pierson (Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes) creating segments for Split/Screen, the American television series about international film. Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin have both been featured on Gonick’s popular and stylized Split/Screen segment entitled, Manitoba Tonight.
He lives in Winnipeg, working on film, video and new media projects as a means of expanding his personal social contacts. He was included in a list of tomorrow’s “Young Leaders” by The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Noam Gonick has been named “a Jewish pornographer of the most dangerous kind.” HEY, HAPPY! is his first feature film.
Mongrel Media
