FILMMAKER-IN-RESIDENCE

2004 – 2009 | director

world’s first long-form web documentary (2006) | live presentations | installations | policy papers | gatherings | media training | participatory art | DVD box collection

THE PROJECT

As an experiment, the National Film Board of Canada placed media maker Katerina Cizek “in residence” at Toronto’s inner-city St. Michael’s Hospital, renowned for innovation in patient care and research. Interdisciplinary and transformative, Filmmaker-in-Residence is a collection of multi-platform documentaries that prove digital storytelling can work as a tool for social action. Young, homeless mothers problem-solve through “video bridging.” Community-based care saves lives in southern Africa. Suicide-intervention therapy and film animation intertwine. Throughout, doctors, nurses and media makers work together to create transformative tools. Filmmaker-in-Residence is now recognized around the world as a model for social, cinematic, and creative innovation.

The project was a five-year experiment, investigating the creative process from within as media makers join doctors, nurses, researchers and patients at the front lines of urban and global health. It included an interactive documentary, a DVD box set collection, and five documentary films, as well as many live presentations, installations, educational components, and interventionist research studies.

WEB DOCUMENTARY 2006

The world’s first feature-length online documentary offering a 75-minute interactive story of a filmmaker in residence at an inner city hospital. Weaving together photos, video, audio and text, the documentary was launched at the world’s largest documentary festival in Amsterdam, IDFA, at the groundbreaking DocAgora summit of 2006. The web documentary won multiple international awards, including a Webby for Documentary (a category only in its 2nd year back then in 2008. PBS won the previous year in that new category for putting documentary films online), a Banff International Television Festival award, a Canadian New Media Award, and nominations for Sheffield Innovation Award and UN World Summit Award. It had a lot of press (“Almost made us want to move to Canada!” one US reviewer proclaimed), and documented in the scholarship, and led to the creation of FIR 2.0, which became HIGHRISE.

FILMMAKER-IN_RESIDENCE COLLECTION: DVD BOXED SET

The Seven Interventions of Filmmaker-in-Residence is a boxed set of 3 DVDs, which include an 80-minute documentary film about the process of making Filmmaker-in-Residence as well as housing all the films: The Bicycle The Interventionists Hand-held Drawing From Life – Filmmaker-in-Residence Web-documentary CD-ROM + resource materials • Available on Amazon 

Filmmaker-in-Residence, produced by the National Film Board of Canada with Senior Producer Gerry Flahive, the world’s first feature-length online documentary, was built with Flash software (a privately owned technology by Adobe), which allowed users to click at their own pace through chapters of interwoven audio, photograph, text, and video. 

Because Adobe discontinued Flash in 2020, the documentary is no longer accessible. Below are videos which illustrate what it  looked like and how it functioned, along with many of the documentaries created during the residency. 

VIDEOS

WEB DOCUMENTARY TRAILER

Trailer for the world’s first feature-length interactive web documentary, Filmmaker-in-Residence (0m 59s).

THE INTERVENTIONISTS (FILM)

A short sequence from THE INTERVENTIONISTS: Chronicles of a Mental Health Crisis Team (2007),  a vérité film that follows a psychiatric nurse and a specially trained police officer who have formed a leading-edge, mobile crisis team that responds to calls involving “emotionally disturbed persons.” Their mandate: to de-escalate crises and decriminalize mental health. This film led to wider implementation of the program across across North America. From the Filmmaker-in-Residence collection. Full film is available at nfb.ca

UNEXPECTED (SHORT FILM)

Unexpected (2008) is a short film that presents a provocative and transformative dialogue between homeless mothers and healthcare professionals who deliver babies. From the Filmmaker-in-Residence HANDHELD collection (16m).

STREET HEALTH STORIES (SHORT FILM)

Street Health Stories (2007) examines health and homelessness, weaving intimate audio interviews together with portrait photography collected by four young women who have themselves experienced homelessness. Featured on CBC News: Sunday.

From the Filmmaker-in-Residence HANDHELD collection (9m).

DRAWING FROM LIFE (SHORT FILM)

Drawing From Life (2008) follows a group-therapy workshop for people who have attempted to end their lives more than once. A hybrid of vérité and animation, the film is a candid portrayal of 12 people who together, for 20 weeks, take on their fears, their behaviours and their ghosts to move towards life and away from suicide. From the Filmmaker-in-Residence collection (30 m).

THE BICYCLE (FILM)

The Bicycle (2006) follows Pax Chingawale as he cycles from village to village in Zomba District, Malawi, fighting AIDS at the grassroots. Pax volunteers with Dignitas International, headed up by Dr. James Orbinski, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for Médecins Sans Frontières.  From the Filmmaker-in-Residence collection. Full film is available at nfb.ca