DIRECTOR'S BLOG

Toronto’s most popular radio program, CBC Radio Metro Morning, is “going HIGHRISE.”

They’ll be broadcasting live from the site of the NFB HIGHRISE project, a Toronto apartment building, where we’ve been working for the last 3 years. On Wednesday, February 15, one million listeners will tune in to hear host Matt Galloway, in conversation with many diverse voices from inside this suburban vertical community. The remote studio will be set up in the ANC meeting room in which many of the NFB HIGHRISE projects were born (including our latest doc, One Millionth Tower).

Yesterday, Matt got his first taste when he visited with some of the residents. Jamal, his mom Faith, Priti, Rita and Najiba all welcomed the consummate (on-air) host in their homes, with a live sax performance, Chinese fortune cookies, Iraqi pizza + pastries, Turkish coffee, along with moving stories of arrival, adaptation and building new communities.

When Matt asked Priti what she would like to say to the rest of Toronto, she replied, “You should be jealous of the great neighbourhood we have here.”

HIGHRISE is acting as a springboard for the CBC to access the building, and to engage with residents and community leaders. Audiences will hear their life stories and about the challenges they face in the building – realities that are no doubt reflective of Toronto’s many other residential towers. HIGHRISE director, Katerina Cizek and University of Toronto professor Deborah Cowen will also join in, to give a sneak peak into upcoming HIGHRISE work, the Digital Citizenship in the Global Suburbs Project.

From the CBC.ca website:
On Wednesday, February 15, we’re packing up the Metro Morning microphones and taking the show on the road. We’ll be broadcasting live from Rexdale, from one of the many concrete highrises along Kipling Avenue, north of Finch. It’s the same building where the NFB has done so much great work in their ongoing series – Highrise. This building is one of more than a thousand rental towers across Toronto’s urban suburbs. They went up in 1950s and 60s, complete with swimming pools and tennis courts, built to attract swinging singles. Now the structures have reached middle age, and are a little worse for wear. But they are home to tens of thousands of newcomers who can’t afford to live anywhere else. Next week – we’ll meet some of them and hear their stories. Building Community: Life in a Rexdale Highrise, next Wednesday on Metro Morning.

Also featured here.

The show airs live 5:30-8:30am ET; it streams live at http://www.cbc.ca/metromorning/ and segments are posted online later in the day. The CBC website will also feature a photo slideshow with audio.

First photo of Priti being interviewed by Matt by Dwight Friesen, for CBC.
All other pix by Kat.

One Millionth Tower has gone live — and not just on the web. Here’s some pix from recent live appearances:

LIVE AT THE GLADSTONE HOTEL

Last week, we celebrated our new web-documentary One Millionth Tower (1MT) live at the historic Gladstone Hotel Ballroom in downtown Toronto. The highlight of the show was a saxophone performance by Jamal, one of the 1MT residents (check out the above bootleg youtube recording by Prof. Roger Keil!) Over 150 Torontonians were in attendance.

The event was hosted by our incredible Senior Producer, Gerry Flahive, who brought 12 people to the stage, each in their own way, highlighting the collaborative nature of the project.

Ob represented the residents on our panel, and he spoke out about the need for resident involvement in changing the landscape of our highrise environments across Toronto.

Graeme Stewart of ERA architects took on tough questions about the mechanics and philosophy of Tower Renewal. How can it really happen? What are the real costs? Who needs to be involved?

Elise Hug of the City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal program, spoke about need for cross-disciplinary collaboration, and how to bring many stakeholders together. She was followed by Jamie Robinson, of United Way, who gave context with the remarkable Vertical Poverty study, and the United Way’s hopes for making the Kipling buildings a demonstration site for what’s possible. Matt Thompson, Chief Storyteller at Mozilla Foundation, rounded out the panel with a great talk about the role open technology can play in city-building. Before the screening, Roger Keil talked about the highrise in the context of “the world” by introdicuing the fabulous Global Suburbanisms project he is spearheading at York University (and with whom we are partnered), while Michael McLelland of ERA Architects gave a great nutshell introduction to the legacy of apartment towers in the city of Toronto. Russell Mitchell of ANC/United Way talked about Rexdale, the neighbourhood in which we are working. Mike Robbins of Helios Design Lab also took to the stage to explain why we used open source to build 1MT.

Somewhere in the packed house was Marcus Gee, columnist for The Globe and Mail, who then filed this great story about our project and vertical Toronto.

LIVE AT THE REAL HIGHRISE

A week before the Gladstone, Ob, Faith, Donna and Jamal showed 1MT live to their neighbours in a moving presentation — in the very meeting room in which the project was created.

LIVE ON THE RADIO

Jamal and Donna also hit the CBC Metro Morning airwaves live in Matt Galloway’s 3-part series dedicated to One Millionth Tower. Metro Morning is the number one morning show in Toronto.

LIVE IN AMSTERDAM

Meanwhile, One Millionth Tower was showcased *live* in Amsterdam for the largest documentary festival in the world, IDFA, as part of the fantastic DocLab lounge. (HIGHRISE won the inaugural DocLab award there for Out My Window last year. This year the honour went to the artful web-documentary In Situ, a lyrical french project from ARTE, which is not unrelated to urban themes in HIGHRISE).

LIVE AT MOZFEST

This is me, Kat Cizek, chuffed to be launching 1MT live at the awesome Mozilla Festival in London U.K. in front of a crowd of 4-500 brilliantly talented hackers and journalists who had gathered for the Media, Freedom and the Web Festival.

LIVE ON WEB TV

And finally, streaming on live web-tv during an interview about 1MT at Mozfest, I had an unexpected visit from the Foxy Mozilla Fox Mascot, the true rockstar of the Mozilla Festival. Never know what can happen when you’re *live.*

Video courtesy Roger Keil, photos from the Gladstone by Marcus Matyas for the NFB, Kipling Launch and CBC Radio by Kat Cizek for the NFB, and Mozilla Festival by Sarah Arruda, for the NFB.

So happy to announce that the new HIGHRISE documentary is now LAUNCHED on the web, for all the world to see for free, currently at the prestigious technology online publication, WIRED.COM.

We will be bringing it to highrise.nfb.ca on Monday Nov 7, mid-day. Meanwhile, this weekend, the HIGHRISE team is participating with the new documentary in a series of live events in London U.K., at the awesome Mozilla Festival, “Media, Freedom and the Web.”

One Millionth Tower is the result of unique collaboration between apartment residents, architects, animators, filmmakers and web developers to re-envision what a declining highrise neighbourhood could be.  Through a close collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation – Mozilla, developer of the open source Firefox browser and a pioneer in promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the web, the HIGHRISE team has created a lush visual story unfolding in a 3D virtual environment. Visitors to the online documentary can explore how participatory urban design can transform spaces, places and minds.

One Millionth Tower re-imagines a universal thread of our global urban fabric — the dilapidated highrise neighbourhood. More than one billion of us live in vertical homes, most of which are falling into disrepair. Highrise residents, together with architects, re-envision their vertical neighbourhood, and animators and web programmers bring their sketches to life in this documentary for the contemporary web browser — one of the world’s first HTML5/webGL documentaries. And it’s got music by Jim Guthrie and Owen Pallett.

Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, says One Millionth Tower ”is a prime example of the work we are doing together to empower makers and build tools that anyone can use to make awesome things happen — on the Web and in the world. It’s a testament to how we are building a better Web together.”

One Millionth Tower places you in the three-dimensional world of a run-down highrise neighbourhood, where, if you access it with a webGL enabled computer, you can interact with the environment and see it re-imagined as a lively, flourishing community. (If you do not have a webGL enabled system, you can still watch a non-interactive video capture of the documentary play out in a virtual 3D space.)

Additional features include:

• a behind-the-scenes documentary about the collaborative process behind One Millionth Tower
• a short documentary featuring international examples of tower revitalization
• a short documentary exploring the open technology used to create the project

and a spectacular interactive feature that takes you to highrise neighbourhoods in more than 200 countries in the world, thanks to Google Streetview and satellite imagery. It’s based on our own original research to find and understand highrise communities around the globe. Visitors can submit their own highrise tower to be included in this unique visual database.

One Millionth Tower is a story with global implications about how, with the power of imagination, we can transform the urban and virtual spaces that belong to all of us.

The team behind One Millionth Tower includes director Kat Cizek, Senior Producer Gerry Flahive, 3D Creative Technologist, Mike Robbins (for Helios Design), Music Jim Guthrie, Owen Pallett, Animators Lillian Chan, Howie Shia, Kelly Sommerfeld, Technical Director Branden Bratuhin, Associate Producer Sarah Arruda, Community Media Project Lead And Creative Associate Heather Frise, Community Media Liaison Maria-Saroja Ponnambalam, Highrise Residents Ob, Faith, Priti, Jamal and Donna, Lead Architect Graeme Stewart (for E.R.A. Architects), Executive Producer Silva Basmajian and many more.

Our previous HIGHRISE project, OUT MY WINDOW,  won a Digital Emmy Award, IDFA’s first-ever Digital Storytelling Award, and many other international prizes.

Join our Social Media Tele-conference about HIGHRISE/OUT MY WINDOW
an open conversation with the director, Katerina Cizek

We’ve had some good responses to our 360º documentary OUT MY WINDOW.

Leslie Scrivener, in a feature spread at The Toronto Star calls it “stunning… profoundly moving…” The Vancouver Sun says: “Beautifully textured, compelling…” Reel Screen reports on our opening at IDFA.

Matt Galloway, of CBC-Radio Metro Morning, sez Out My Window is “unbelievable, extraordinary… What I’ve been obsessed with for the last few days… Worth spending a couple of hours with.” Listen to the interview here.

We got Boing-Boing-ed.

At Forbes in his Buzz Boom and Sizzle blog, Bill Barol says: “In assembling like a mosaic the static images of tower-dwellers across the world, Cizek honors their stories and creates something that moves, in every sense of the word.”

Chicagoist sez “ingenious… produced by the always-awesome National Film Board of Canada…”

Huffington Post sez “More than 100 people from around the world came together on this project — watch it, be astonished and stay connected as they unveil more features in 2011 (maybe you want to tell your story?). And while “Out My Window” isn’t for sale, you can buy something from the NFB’s online store — help keep documentary filmmaking alive!

Tracy Boyer, at Innovative Interactivity, sez: “It’s been cool seeing panorama technology integrated into multimedia storytelling, and I would argue that this is the best attempt at doing it seamlessly amidst a myriad of other multimedia elements. Make sure to have your volume on for this one – they know the importance of high quality sound and fitting music!”

The Activist Writer Blog sez: “This is panorama-technology put to perfect use for social awareness.”

Sam Gregory at Witness.org, of NYC, writes about our 360º technology, about it’s potential for human rights advocacy, and the Phnom Penh stories in a post called “Learning from Innovations at the Highrise Project.”

Carl Wilson, culture and music critic, makes us his web pick of the week at Back to the World, calling it “…beautiful, meditative… really gives meaning to interactivity. Prepare to spend some time exploring it.”

A thoughtful thorough review at Yonge Street blog.

Important music blog, Said the Gramaphone, sez “It’s a brilliant, and very touching project. Go, with half an hour to spare, and check out (at the very least) some of my favourite stories…”

Ontrack blog sez: “Spend some time on the site and feel like you’ve traveled the world over without one airport security check.”

Lavraki blog sez: “This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long while: part film, part sort of choose your own adventure.”

AOL tech blog, Switched, calls it a “documentary interactive event (“film” doesn’t quite do it justice).”

California Home + Design Resource Blog sez: “It’s a fascinating look at what part these architectural behemoths play in segregation and community building, and the effects of design on contemporary life.”

We were “one GOOD thing a day” in the city department.

Great review in the popular educational blog, Open Culture.

BlogTO sez: “The result is a fascinating interactive mosaic made up of fragmented and non-linear stories that challenge traditional perceptions of the urban experience. Perhaps most admirable is Cizek’s ability to deftly address themes of migration, poverty, and environmentalism without ever losing sight of the lived experience of her film’s subjects.”

In-depth interviews at MIT’s Collab Radio, Australia’s SBS Love Factually: part one and part two.

Also reviews at Playback Magazine, La Femme Architecte, PSFK, Bombay Flying Club, Sociolography, Visual Journalist, Things are Good, Collab Docs, U Chicago Blog, Stories of our City, Archiculture, Osocio, Curious Mind, Objects, buildings, Situations, 1loveTO, SCOPE, Canadian Centre for Architecture.

And in the twitterverse:

@brainpicker, influential blogger, says “brilliant”

@joguldi, historian at the Harvard Society of Fellows, “i have seen the future of cinema and it is spatial.”

@gnomeslair, online gamer, says: “Now THAT is how interactive documentaries should be.”

@PJHatfield, curator at British Library, says: “This is stunning, merging the geography of the high rise and film.”

@snapncrackle, a college professor, says: “Profound and playful.”

@lafemmearchitct, New York-based architect,  says: “I. MUST. SHARE. THIS. WITH. ARCHITECTURAL. COMMUNITY.

@slituchy, multi-media producer at West Virginia University, “Holy Multimedia, Batman! Amazing piece uses photo, video, music and interactivity really well.”

@ripmanifesto, (Brett Gaylor, award-winning director of RIP Manifesto) says “epic… must watch.”

@jessebrown, host of TVO’s Search Engine, says “Really impressive.”

@dougsaunders, The Globe and Mail European correspondent, author of Arrival City, says “Seriously: Go into the Cuban apartment, click on the headphones, scroll, freak”

Its’s also tweeted by an editor at The New York Times, a project manager at The Wall Street Journal and Head of Research at National Geographic Television.

We launch HIGHRISE’s first web-documentary tonight.

It’s called THE THOUSANDTH TOWER: Stories from inside a Toronto Suburban Highrise. We’ll be down at City Hall, with the Mayor et al. getting highrise residents’ voices in front of city politicians, administrators, urban planners and the general public. We’ve had some nice press: Shawn Micallef columned us at Eye Weekly and Spacing Media and Now Magazine calls us one of this week’s can’t miss event. Torontoist lists us here. Listen to the radio interview from CBC’s Metro Morning here. Toronto Star takes more of a newsy angle. And HIGHRISE as whole has also yesterday been listed as one of 7 Mindblowing Multi-Media projects.

Audiences can get a peak at the THOUSANDTH TOWER here, and just so you know… we’re busy putting the final touches on a large, very global web-documentary (13 cities around the world, 12 languages, over 90 minutes of riveting story built into a totally awesome interactive framework), Out My Window, due out soon on an worldwideweb screen near you.

We launch HIGHRISE’s first web-documentary tonight.

It’s called THE THOUSANDTH TOWER: Stories from inside a Toronto Suburban Highrise. We’ll be down at City Hall, with the Mayor et al. getting highrise residents’ voices in front of city politicians, administrators, urban planners and the general public. We’ve had some nice press: Shawn Micallef columned us at Eye Weekly and Spacing Media and Now Magazine calls us one of this week’s can’t miss event. Torontoist lists us here. Listen to the radio interview from CBC’s Metro Morning here. Toronto Star takes more of a newsy angle. And HIGHRISE as whole has also yesterday been listed as one of 7 Mindblowing Multi-Media projects.

Audiences can get a peak at the THOUSANDTH TOWER here, and just so you know… we’re busy putting the final touches on a large, very global web-documentary (13 cities around the world, 12 languages, over 90 minutes of riveting story built into a totally awesome interactive framework), Out My Window, due out soon on an worldwideweb screen near you.

HIGHRISE is getting some nice tweets:

@dougsaunders, The Globe and Mail’s European Bureau Chief,  sez: ”Documentary-maker Katerina Cizek is up to something pretty genius re plattenbau: http://highrise.nfb.ca/ ”

(Doug is currently penning a book about the rural-to-urban migration, called Arrival City, to be published by Random House. Another possible Highrise-collabo?)

@koci, Ford Foundation Multimedia Fellow @ UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism sez: ”This is a must see, beautiful! Watch the Trailer http://highrise.nfb.ca/”

Back in the Blogosphere, multimedia shooter lists HIGHRISE as No . 1, in the “9 Multimedia projects you must see.”

The U.S. based Documentary Blog sez HIGHRISE is, “hands down, the snazziest website I have ever seen for a documentary,” as they list us as one of the 10 documentaries to watch for in 2010.

And then, the Canadian Minister of Heritage, tweeted about the list.

HIGHRISE just touched down in Amsterdam, for the world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA.

And we’ve just been mentioned in today’s Huffington Post, the most linked-to blog on the internet. Our earlier project, Filmmaker-in-Residence recently launched the complete DVD Box Set. It’s listed in Huff Po’s Top Ten New Radicals Gift, and it includes a link to HIGHRISE. Feels like we’ve made Santa’s list!

Here in Amsterdam, HIGHRISE will make introductory presentations on various panels to diverse audiences at the Festival.  And thanks to IDFA’s DocLab Master, Caspar Sonnen, HIGHRISE will be partnering with a very interesting dutch new-tech company to test-run a very cool camera in a documentary context. We’ll be doing the shoot at Bijlmermeer, a fantastic tower renewal site just southeast of the city. More on that later this week….

A nice shout out in the Torontoist about our presentation at Creative Places and Spaces conference last week. Also this mention in Now Magazine, this notice in blogTO and this synopsis at Spacing. Another great blog post about FIR at the conference is here.

And just-in a week later, Kwende Kefentse (of the Creative Class blog) ranks us “best collaboration” of the conference here.

Since our visit to Amsterdam, we’ve had a nice blog mention by europe’s leading interactive production house, submarine channel here.