National Post (National Edition)
Far Away From Far Away brings innovative, interactive storytelling to your smartphone
A new National Film Board of Canada (NFB) project dives deep into a corner of Canadian history and finds an artful new way to story-tell with smartphone technology.
Far Away From Far Away, the latest experimental project from NFB’s pioneering interactive studio, blends imagery, sound, and narration to transport viewers to Fogo Island, a remote and magical part of Newfoundland. Hauntingly evocative, it also prompts them to ponder what’s important in life.
Executive produced by Annette Clarke and Rob McLaughlin, the project is inspired by visionary Canadian businesswoman Zita Cobb. Award-winning Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey traces her growing up on isolated Fogo Island, heading out into the world, and returning late in life with a new mission. But it is much more than a linear film about one person’s fascinating life: viewers follow touchscreen prompts that allow them to explore and press deeper through the story’s immersive world of sight and sound. Creative directors Bruce Alcock and Jeremy Mendes have crafted an innovative, 25-minute journey that allows you to swipe back and forth between past and present. Tap on a murky-blue underwater shot of a surging sea, and it suddenly parts to reveal old, black-and-white footage of children rowing skiffs in the harbour.
The high-tech yet tactile format takes you to the rocky shores of a place that was once devastated by the loss of the inshore cod fishery, but which has come back to economic and cultural life.
“For me, this is about how the parts belong to the whole. How does one person’s life relate to all of our lives? How does one place relate to all the other places?” asks Cobb, raised on the island during the tumultuous 1960s and ‘70s.
Cobb left home to study business, and after decades of success in the tech industry, she returned to found the Shorefast charity. Endeavours to spur the local economy include the Fogo Island Inn, a community-owned architectural landmark furnished by local artisans.
St. John’s-based producer Clarke likes how the mobile platform parallels what’s happening on Fogo Island now. “The foundation of Fogo Island’s sustainability is traditional forms of knowledge transformed to reflect contemporary time,” she says. “The FAFFA process mirrors that: we began with a conversation and we’ve created a story specifically for smartphones.
It’s unique for our times--as the Fogo Process was in the ‘60s”
Far Away From Far Away began as an effort to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 27 “Fogo Process” documentaries by Colin Low. Part of 1967’s Challenge for Change project, the seminal NFB films helped residents connect with each other while cod stocks were collapsing, and eventually form fishing co-ops to avoid resettlement.
“If not for the NFB, we wouldn’t be living on Fogo Island now,” Cobb asserts. “I think we were saved by art.”
Far Away From Far Away includes some of Low’s blackand-white footage of ’60s life on the island--when there was no electricity or running water, and fishers used 300-year-old handline methods. Those scenes juxtapose with handheld iPhone-shot images by Newfoundland cinematographer Justin Simms, who was helped by Fogo high-school students: green fishing nets piled on docks, or old clapboard houses clinging to hills.
The spark for the project was long talks between Cobb and author Michael Crummey, at Fogo Island Inn. She was passionate about economic revival for resourcebased communities. But she also shared personal stories, many involving her beloved father: following him around while he split wood in the winter, or witnessing him toss the single cod he’d caught all day on the kitchen floor in frustration.
Crummey later integrated those conversations into his poetic text, read in the project by actor Ruby Joy.
Cobb was at first reticent about revealing some of her most personal, and sometimes painful memories.
“Then I had many sleeps on it and started to realize it just happens to be me, but it could have been anyone living in outport Newfoundland at the time,” she says. “It’s not my life story, it’s our story.”
Corner Brook-born Alcock was determined not to oversentimentalize any of the subject matter. “There is a lot of hackneyed imagery about Newfoundland--with the salty-looking sailors and the hard-looking landscape,” he says.
The goal was to make a fluid mobile experience. “It’s encouraging you to ruminate and play while you’re taking it in,” he says. “The language can rattle around in your head a little bit and that lets you relate it to your own life.”
The larger messages resonate, particularly in this pandemic era: the importance of home and family, and the need to focus on what you have.
“It’s speaking to what’s valuable in your specific place and if you come together as a community, no matter the size or location, you probably won’t go wrong,” observes Clarke.
These are the tenets Cobb hopes will carry through. She’s thrilled with a work that contrasts the flat and fleeting experiences we’re used to onscreen. “It’s giving it a dimensionality that wouldn’t otherwise be there,” she says. “And I think my dad would think that was pretty cool.”
To experience Far Away From Far Away, visit faraway.nfb.ca on your mobile device.