I-docs as Research Method – Recap from the Bremen interactive documentary workshop

A full day packed with insightful presentations and a highly inspiring round table discussion – that’s probably the shortest way to describe a long one-day workshop organised by Stefano Odorico and hosted at the University of Bremen on May 3. The workshop is one of the outputs of Stefano’s 3 year’s DFG project (fully funded by the German Research Council) …

Data as a Narrative Device – ‘A Means to an End and not the End itself’

An interview with Janine Steele and Loc Dao on data-driven story-telling and emotional engagement During his stay as a Fulbright Scholar in the Digital Studios of the NFB in Vancouver, Lomax Boyd, a scientist and documentary producer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, had the opportunity to work with Janine Steele and Loc Dao of NFB/Interactive. As Chief Digital Officer …

David Dufresne on Fort McMoney: Challenges, narrative & budget

Fort McMoney (Making of) from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo. Fort McMoney launched at IDFA 2013 and we thought our i-Docs community would be interested in an exclusive interview with its director, David Dufresne (previously known for Prison Valley). Fort McMoney speaks of the environmental issues behind the oil industry through the language of a collaborative docu-game – an ambitious challenge …

A Short History of the Highrise: the debut of the immersive, interactive multimedia series

The New York Times’s Op-Docs and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) have debuted their immersive, interactive multimedia series, A Short History of the Highrise yesterday. Optimised for tablet and comprised of videos on urban highrise living, the series had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival and launched yesterday on NYTimes.com. Incase you weren’t aware already, the series …

Fort McMoney: Two years of research, 60 days of shooting, 50 interviews.

More exciting news from the NFB today; on November 25, TOXA and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), in association with ARTE, will launch Fort McMoney (fortmcmoney.com), a trilingual (English, French and German) interactive documentary game about the issues facing Fort McMurray, Alberta. Created by David Dufresne. an independent journalist and documentarian who was also behind the well-known interactive documentary Prison Valley. Fort McMurray is a …

Op-Docs & the NFB’s “A Short History of the Highrise” to debut at New York Film Festival

The New York Times’s Op-Docs and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will debut their new new immersive documentary series as part of the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival Convergence program –  a showcase for storytelling that transcends a single narrative medium – on Monday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. ET. Following this, the series will premiere on NYTimes.com in October. “We are greatly honored …

NFB & MIT OpenDocLab collaborate on the next production of Highrise

Exciting news from overseas! The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentarian Katerina Cizek will be working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenDocLab , the first-ever collaboration between two pioneering interactive media organisations. The scope of the project is to develop the next production in the NFB’s multi-award-winning HIGHRISE documentary project – a multi-year, multimedia, collaborative documentary experiment that explores …

NFB announce brand new international documentary initiative!

Great news from the NFB yesterday as they announce their new documentary initiative! The new multi-platform and eventually multi-lingual destination will house some of the world’s best documentaries and interactive experiences. Government Film Commissioner and Chairperson of the NFB, Tom Perlmutter commented: “As one of the most important world centres for documentary, we have a responsibility to audiences here and around the world, …

NFB collaborate with NY Times on documentary series about high-rise living

The New York Times Opinion Pages today announced a new multiplatform interactive series of Op-Docs in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as part of its ongoing HIGHRISE project.  ‘A Short History of the Highrise’ will premiere this summer on NYTimes.com and subsequently on NFB.ca/highrise. The series, an interactive project comprised of four short documentaries, explores the history …

i-Docs and the BBC

I wrote this post for the Open Democracy website. It is one of a number of open letters to the incoming BBC Director General, that have been published within the OurBeeb section of the site. MR You’re a journalist; investigating the working conditions of the miners who are fuelling China’s industrial growth. You follow leads, conduct interviews in the polluted, devastated landscape of Shanxi, …

Here at Home: brand new NFB i-Doc

You cross paths with the homeless each day—but do you really see them? Through five Canadian cities, five filmmakers and some 40 short films posted online between now and summer 2013, Here At Home, the new interactive Web documentary from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), lets you follow in real time some of the participants in the world’s …

Bear 71

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/35267742] Just launched at Sundance, Bear 71 is a brilliant interactive documentary created by Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison with the NFB Digital Studio. It’s a haunting story told from the point-of-view of a female grizzly bear – Bear 71 – about humans and animals in the Banff National Park, and how animals are being devastated in that relationship. It’s about nature, technology, …

How can 3D worlds be used in documentaries? A review of One Millionth Tower

Kat Cizek, and her NFB team, have just launched Highrise’s latest baby: One Millionth Tower. This is the fifth experiment in four years of what is now becoming a networked documentary, rather than a simple idoc. When Highrise started at the NFB in 2008 it was described as a “multi-year, multi-media documentary” but I have to admit that the whole concept was not very clear …