Exhibit ‘Technological Displacement’ Brings Out Apps and Popular Technology Consoles for an Evening of Creativity

TORONTO, ONTARIO– On the eve of October 1, a diverse group of fourteen artists, producers and contributors from the latest installment of CFC Media Lab’s TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program (IAEP) will transform the Bata Shoe Museum into a space of collaborative exploration and play. The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) is once again thrilled to be an official part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night, interactive, cultural extravaganza celebrating contemporary art in Toronto.

CFC Media Lab Exhibition 2011: Technological Displacement invites the audience to re-imagine game play and consider their ever-evolving relationship to communications technologies. Inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the global village and his influence on screen-based media, this year’s exhibition features five inventive, interactive and thought-provoking projects: Alone Together, Cats Breaking Antiques, Heart of Stars, Quetzal, and tweet2hold. Come and explore these groundbreaking installations.

CFC Media Lab Exhibition 2011: Technological Displacement

The following projects will be on display:

Alone Together is an “art-app” designed for the BlackBerry Playbook that uses poetic wordplay and expressive videos to ponder questions of selfhood and explore the meaning of relationships between individuals. Creative Team: Shawn Kerwin, Laurel MacDonald.

A fun, irreverent and visually rich environment to discover on a BlackBerry Playbook, Cats Breaking Antiques pokes fun at pop culture, media and our digital lives. Users explore this environment as a modernized version of Felix the Cat, destroying traditional media content and objects by engaging with a variety of mini arcade games, quizzes and animated film clips. Creative Team: Hannah Epstein, Monica Law, John Watson.

Using groundbreaking Microsoft Kinect technology, Heart of Stars turns users into 3D avatars made of points of light that float through space. Combining high resolution images of deep space with gesture-triggered operatic electronica, Heart of Stars entices users to defy gravity and attempt to fly through the cosmos. Creative Team: Vanessa Shaver, Tsu-Ching Yu.

Quetzal is an interactive story that harnesses the latest in consumer-level EEG technology to weave 2D illustrations and 3D game play into a rich narrative tapestry. Through the power of thought, users become actors in Quetzal, resulting in an engaging, emotional experience that is the future of interactive cinema. Creative Team: Michael Evask, Ryan Rizzo, Mark Thoburn. Produced & Written by: Michael Evask, Mark Thoburn.

tweet2hold asks strangers to share a secret about the future via Twitter before converting responses into unique paper keepsakes through a combination of technology and graphic design. tweet2hold also leverages the sophisticated analysis engine, Lymbix to determine the emotional tone of each secret and assign it an appropriate colour palette. Creative Team: Ryan Bigge, Edwin Lara, Dylan Reibling, Ron Wild.

Also on display during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is The Movie Studio Playhouse, a collaboration between CFC Media Lab and TIFF, the Movie Studio Playhouse is an interactive installation that allows participants to make and play with moving image stories in real time. As participants act in spontaneously-created films, the images they create will be projected live onto various surfaces at TIFF Bell Lightbox. VJs will then mix, manipulate, mash, and multiply these live video streams and turn them into moving digital paintings.

Harnessing a wide range of creative skills and knowledge, the CFC Media Lab’s TELUS Interactive Art and Entertainment Program (IAEP) is Canada’s first post-graduate program for new media training and production, based on the philosophy that compelling content is created through a collaborative process. This team-based approach encourages residents from a variety of backgrounds, including: design, filmmaking, production, writing, visual art, music and programming. An internationally acclaimed facility, CFC Media Lab has produced award-winning new media prototypes ranging from simulation-based interactive documentaries, to wireless storytelling networks, to interactive short films and narrative-driven media installations.

For event details and project photos, please visit: www.cfccreates.com/exhibition.

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche: Saturday, October 1, 2011 – Sunday, October 2, 2011 – Open to the public from 6:59 p.m. – sunrise.

ABOUT CFC

CFC is Canada’s leading institution for advanced training in film, television and new media. A charitable not-for-profit organization, CFC is committed to promoting and investing in Canada’s diverse talent; providing exhibition, financial and distribution opportunities for top creative content leaders from coast to coast. CFC makes a significant cultural and economic contribution to Canada by launching the country’s most creative ideas and voices in film, television and new media to the world. CFC Media Lab is Canada’s acclaimed institute for digital media that provides a unique training, research and production think-tank environment for emerging new media artists, content developers and practitioners. CFC Media Lab has been experimenting with the interactive narrative form since 1997 and in the past ten years, has produced over 60 prototypes ranging from web-based interactive documentaries to “shuffle videos”- the creation of randomly generated movies on the i-Pod. For more information please visit: cfccreates.com.

Connect with CFC Media Lab: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stabletalk?ref=ts, Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/cfcmedialab

Connect with Canadian Film Centre: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cfccreates, Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/cfccreates

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:

On Thursday, September 29, 2010, CFC Media Lab launched the prototypes created by Residents from the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 sessions of the TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program.

On Saturday, October 2, 2010, these prototypes were exhibited for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010 at InterAccess Gallery.

CFC Media Lab Presents: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

A night of "Exploratory Play"...

"Exploratory Play"... IN 3D!

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010 Exhibit: Zone C #19

Neighbourhoodie, Created By: Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, David McCallum

Unit N-O14, Created By: Camille Betts, Justin Ferrato

DruMeBa, Created By: Dee Balkissoon, Cathy Chen, Orla Garriques, Conor Holler

Voicings, Created By: Dawn Buie, Liz Gallo, David Goorevitch

I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies, Created By: Sharon Switzer, Featured Alumni Artist

A good-lookin' crowd being addressed by our fearless leaders...

Slawko Klymkiw, CFC Executive Director

Ana Serrano, CFC Media Lab Director

Jacqueline Nuwame, CFC Media Lab Senior Training Programs Manager

And what party is a party without decadent food!

A great big THANK YOU to everyone who made the night such a success!

Are you a filmmaker with a passion for comedy? Want to work with the best comedic talent in the business to make your comedy feature a reality?

Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab (www.cfccreates.com/comedy) is a CFC Film Program in Collaboration with Just For Laughs (www.hahaha.com).

There’s some very heavy weight people at the Lab. Just to get their ear is difficult enough in this business. These filmmakers are in a very privileged position.

- Eugene Levy, Chair of the Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab

For more information and criteria visit www.cfccreates.com/comedy or email Kristine Kazias, kkazias@cfccreates.com

Dear Friends,

Our colleague, our mentor and our dearest friend, Jerry Durlak died on Saturday. I stole this picture of him from his daughter Caitlin’s Flickr pool. The jaunty hat, the purple shirt and the slight twinkle in the eye epitomize beautifully the Jerry we all knew and loved — whip-smart, confident, full of youthful exuberance, optimistic and ever-present.  What makes CFC Media Lab the unique place it is today is largely because of Jerry’s influence. He was there in 1997 when the stables were renovated into the “electronic cottage.” And he was there to push, excite, support and mentor this young woman who had no experience building a “school” but was too terrified to let anybody know. Except Jerry. He commanded trust (and in time, one’s adoration). He doled out equal measures of insights, references, practical advice, and what may seem like non-sequiturs until you shake your head a few more times and discover that he has made a connection only he had the lightning bolt ability to make.

I will miss him very much. We will all miss him.

Please join his wife, Reccia Mandelcorn and children, Alex, Caitlin and Meagan Durlak and step-daughter, Rachel Rosen.

A Meditation Service for Jerry Durlak
Thursday May 27, 2010
11AM
The Simple Alternative
275 Lesmill Road
416-441-1580

In lieu of flowers, donations to One Laptop per Child: www.laptop.org (OLPC Foundation, P.O.Box 425087, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142) would be appreciated.

Coffee and tea will be served at the Centre before and after the ceremony.

All the best,
Ana

This year’s 14th Annual Webby Awards celebrating outstanding online content will be held on June 14 in New York City. Dubbed the “Oscars of the Online World”, the Webby Awards honour exceptional producers and creators of blogs, websites, web tv shows, interactive advertising, online films, online video and mobile websites.

Canadian content producers have always been strong contenders at the Webby Awards.
This year was no different.

Love Letters to the Future, designed by CFC Media Lab Alumni, Patrick Crowe and Thomas Wallner’s Xenophile Media Inc., walked away with both the Webby and the People’s Voice awards in the “Green” Website category. The site allows users to send a video, image or message to be seen by future generations. In December, the Top 100 entries, as voted by the site’s visitors, were placed in a time capsule and delivered to the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Toronto’s Swarm Entertainment won the Webby Netart award for Nawls, an interactive multimedia web comic.

AmoebaCorp of Toronto won the Webby for best use of animation or motion graphics for a promotional site for The Pop Shoppe.

Academy of Vancouver won the Webby for “best visual design – aesthetic” for History of Flight, a web exhibit of NBA great Michael Jordan’s iconic Air Jordan shoes.

1000 Awesome Things by Toronto’s Neil Pasricha won the People’s Voice award in the “blog – cultural” category.

Manifest Communications of Toronto won the People’s Voice award in the activism category for a site for the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation.

RAPP of Toronto won the People’s Voice award in the pharmaceuticals category for a promotional site for a GlaxoSmithKline product, Alli.

An interactive Web video based on the renowned documentary WaterLife and an iPhone application showcasing Canadian films earned Canada’s National Film Board (NFB) five Webby noms, a record number for the NFB.

Nominated for Online Film & Video, Best Sound Design, was The Curse of Degrassi, from Epitome Pictures Inc.

TAXI Canada‘s Let’s Change Insurance – Aviva Banners received a Banner Campaign nomination for the Interactive Advertising category.

TAXI Canada also received a nod for Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics in the Website category for Smart Set’s Fashion At Play.

For the Email Marketing category, DDB Canada / Tribal Vancouver received a nomination for The Big Wild Email.

DDB Canada / Tribal Vancouver also received a nod for Russian Dolls for the Online Commercial category.

WAY TO BRING IT, CANADA!

*banner image from Xenophile’s Love Letters to the Future.

WANT TEN GRAND IN YOUR HAND?

The submission deadline for The Reel Challenge is fast approaching! Submit your film online by April 26, 2010 at thereelchallenge.ca.

The Reel Challenge contest, an initiative of the CFC, challenges filmmakers to create a short film that will persuade audiences to respect creator’s rights and copyright protection for their work.

1st place winner: $10,000

2nd & 3rd place winners: $2,500

Please note the contest is open to residents of Canada (excluding Quebec as well as all CFC employees and their families)

For more information click HERE.

It’s been confirmed!

Lee Daniels, Oscar nominated Director (Precious, 2009), has been confirmed to join Norman Jewison and African-Canadian filmmaker and CFC Alumnus, Clement Virgo for CFC’s Salute to Black History Month event mentioned last week.

Don’t miss this exciting event!

The CFC is saluting Black History Month by holding a discussion on black representation in cinema with Norman Jewison and African-Canadian filmmaker and CFC Alumnus, Clement Virgo (plus a special guest TBA.)

When: February 9, 2010 at 7 pm

Where: Isabel Bader Theatre (map)

All proceeds from this event will go to the CFC Diversity Scholarship Fund.

Additional info can be found here.

We are so proud to announce Sheena Macdonald,  Director of Special Projects, CFC, was presented with the 2009 Honorary Rose Award and Xenophile Media, CFC Media Lab Alumni won the first ever Multi Platform Award at the 2009 Rose D’Or.

Lucerne, Switzerland  – May 5, 2009 – This year’s Golden Rose winners were announced at the Awards Ceremony held on the final evening of the 49th  annual Rose d’Or Festival. Winners were presented with a coveted Golden Rose Award by international stars including Anatole Taubman (Quantum Of Solace), Sofia Milos (CSI Miami) and Jennifer Gareis (The Bold And The Beautiful). The event was hosted by American actor and comedian Maz Jobrani.

Festival Director Urban Frye presented Sheena Macdonald, Director of Special Projects at The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) and writer/producer George Anthony with the 2009 Honorary Rose.

“This award is presented to individuals who have made a significant impact on the entertainment television industry,” said Frye, “Sheena and George have made outstanding contributions during their careers. Their extraordinary achievements demonstrate the value of embracing quality, originality and creativity, and I am delighted to present them with the 2009 Honorary Rose Award.”

MULTI PLATFORM CATAGORY

MI High, Whack The Mole, The MI High Alternate Reality Game
Production Company: Xenophile Media
Broadcaster/Distributor: BBC

Whack the Mole, The MI High Alternate Reality Game, was created to enhance the viewer’s connection to the second season of MI High. Thirteen online episodes linked to thirteen episodes on TV broadcast from January to April 2008.
The interactive experience brings the world of MI High to life; offering viewers the chance to become an MI High Field Agent, literally joining the MI High Team, foiling villains and solving cases of vital importance to the British secret service.