NFB’s ‘Circa 1948’ project show Vancouver through app and installation

By

TORONTO – It’s 1948 and a mysterious woman checks into the Hotel Vancouver, telling the front desk she’s looking for her husband. Meanwhile, a local radio newscast announces a housing crisis for legions of homeless war vets, and a police constable confesses he’s at the hotel to place a bet with a bookie.

The scenes are from the innovative National Film Board of Canada-produced project “Circa 1948,” which includes an artistic 3-D app, a website and an interactive installation that launched in competition at Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes program in New York on Tuesday.

Renowned Vancouver-based visual artist Stan Douglas and the NFB Digital Studio co-created the so-called storyworld, which offers an immersive experience that takes users directly into the sights, sounds and headlines of the city back then.

The free iPad and iPhone app, which also launched Tuesday, allows users to navigate their own way through two locations that were vibrant at that time but no longer exist today: The ethnically diverse Hogan’s Alley on the east side, and the old Hotel Vancouver in the west end.

By touching, tapping and tilting their device, users can move through both locations and soak in the stunning sights. Along the way, they hear a jazzy soundtrack featuring Dizzy Gillespie as well as CBC radio newscasts from the time and conversations between characters (voiced by actors) that form a story inspired by true events at the time.

The interactive installation making its world premiere at Tribeca offers the same experience, only users step into a cube that is about four metres wide by three metres high and use their bodies as the interface to move through the 3-D world that’s projected around them.

The year the project is set in “was a seminal period because World War II was ending, it was a time of hope, it was a time where a lot of change was in the air,” said Loc Dao, executive producer of the NFB’s English Program Digital Studio in Vancouver.

“But at the same time they were dealing with a banking system that was in trouble, there was a housing crisis. Even though we were coming off one war we were then also now dealing with new threats, so at that time it was the Cold War, and then there were issues around immigration and integration and racial divides.”

Dao said the project started a couple of years ago, when Douglas and Gemini Award-winning screenwriter Chris Haddock approached the NFB with a feature script for a film noir.

The film was beyond what they could program on several fronts, so they started discussing other ideas for the story.

Douglas is known for his non-linear storytelling approach, which Dao’s studio had already tried with its “Bear 71” interactive web documentary.

“So the crux of ‘Circa 1948’ felt like a natural progression,” said Dao.

“When Stan first brought the project to us, we talked a bit about how history repeats itself, and there are striking parallels with obviously the housing crisis in the United States, the banking system issues that we were all going through globally and obviously the continued tension around immigration and racial divide that has never really ended in the United States, and there were obviously issues going on in Europe.”

Dao and Douglas plan to do a live launch event at Tribeca, where the interactive installation will be available for the public to use for free for four days.

Dao said they hope to bring the installation to a few cities in Canada over the next year as well.

Douglas has also created a sister project, the original stage play “Helen Lawrence,” which shares the graphics, story and characters from “Circa 1948.” It recently finished a run in Vancouver and will play in Montreal on May 22, then travel to Munich and Edinburgh before being mounted at Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre on Oct. 12.

___

Follow @VictoriaAhearn on Twitter.

Online: http://circa1948.nfb.ca/

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today