Interactive documentary emerged rapidly from a constellation of changing technologies and practices to much excitement, yet its history is short and its future uncertain. In the mid-2010s Canada was a world leader in the creation of i-docs. Less than a decade later technological obsolescence has rendered many of these celebrated projects inaccessible, while rapid digital innovation continues to change the i-doc form and its modes of experience.
The Interactive Documentary in Canada captures this transitional moment in documentary filmmaking and media production. Bringing together a range of historical, theoretical, and critical approaches, this collection examines the past – and the imagined future – of a nonfiction storytelling phenomenon that has Canadian institutions, figures, and works at its centre. Embracing a polyphonic conception of interactive documentary, the volume includes explorations of web-based, app-based, installation, and virtual reality works that push the boundaries of what is understood as documentary cinema. Leading documentary scholars and makers consider the historical and technological contexts of i-doc production, innovation, and exhibition; the political and pedagogical potential of the genre; the ethics of the i‐doc experience; and the format’s future lifespan in the contemporary media landscape.
The Interactive Documentary in Canada establishes a place for the i-doc in the history of Canadian film, highlighting the genre’s significant impact on the National Film Board of Canada and on contemporary global documentary media.
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- Montreal, CA
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- THE INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY IN CANADA 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- Dedication 6
- CONTENTS 8
- Figures 12
- Acknowledgments 14
- Introduction – The Interactive Documentary in Canada 18
- Part 1 Technology, Innovation, Experimentation: Histories and Case Studies of I-Doc Production and Exhibition in Canada 38
- 1 The National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio: An Oral History 40
- 2 Notes on Impact: The Case of the Interactive Documentary GDP 65
- 3 Fort McMoney: The Challenge of Maintaining Interactive Documentary 85
- 4 Viewfinders: Exploring Travelling and Landscapes via Augmented Reality 105
- 5 Always Already Old: Looking Back with the Korsakow System 120
- 6 I-Docs and Live Performance: Highrise: Universe Within at Hot Docs 140
- Part 2 Encounters with Others: Activism, Agency, and Ethics 156
- 7 Collaborative Encounters: I-Docs and Environmental Pedagogy in and beyond the Classroom 158
- 8 Thinking in Networks: The Interactive Documentary as a Tool for Social Change 176
- 9 Interactivity as Ethical Encounter in The Space We Hold 196
- 10 Fish Love: Digital Technology and Passivity in Nettie Wild’s Uninterrupted 213
- 11 Playing with Extreme Oil: Slow Catastrophe and the Melancholic Imaginary in Offshore and Fort McMoney 230
- Part 3 Image and Sound beyond “the Real”: Media Pasts, Presents, and Futures 250
- 12 Nostalgia, “Old” Media, and Welcome to Pine Point 252
- 13 Acoustic Profiling in Hogan’s Alley: Mapping Intersectional Soundways in the Lost Vancouver Neighbourhood of Stan Douglas’s ios app Circa 1948 266
- 14 A Journal of Insomnia: The Individualization of Sleep in a Wired World 284
- 15 Going Deep: Hybrid Capture in Documentary 299
- 16 Indigenous Futurism and the Immersive Worlding of Inherent Rights, Vision Rights, 2167, and Biidaaban: First Light 318
- Afterword – On the Outside Looking In: Perspective on the New Media Documentary in Canada 341
- Contributors 356
- Index 364
