Critic-at-large John Powers looks at the recent work of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. His film Brand Upon the Brain! is now out on DVD, and his movie My Winnipeg is currently playing in theaters.
On August 3, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure at age 89. Solzhenitsyn exposed the atrocities committed by the Soviet Gulag in his work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Fresh Air remembers the Nobel Prize winner.