Synopsis for Late Fragment

 

 

PRODUCED BY THE CANADIAN FILM CENTRE IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA ,"LATE FRAGMENT" AN INTERACTIVE FILM BY DARYL CLORAN, ANITA DORON, MATEO GUEZ, ANITA LEE AND ANA SERRANO STARRING KRISTA BRIDGES, MICHAEL HEALEY, JEFF PARAZZO EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (NFB) SILVA BASMAJIAN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (CFC) ANA SERRANO COMPOSER DAVID WALL PRODUCTION DESIGNER JORDAN ESTALL EDITOR ROSLYN KALLOO DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY FRANÇOIS DAGENAIS PRODUCER ANA SERRANO PRODUCER ANITA LEE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY DARYL CLORAN, ANITA DORON AND MATEO GUEZ PRODUCED WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF CANADIAN HERITAGE, THE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE AND THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE

Eyelids smeared with black shadow, a teenage girl stands at the foot of the bed and pulls the trigger. The man waking from sleep barely knows what has just happened to him. In a single moment, lives can shatter:

An oblivious and regretful mother is haunted by love, lust, betrayal and memories of a dead man. She lives in a world of denial.

A repressed middle-aged security guard has lost everything - his marriage, a thriving career, and the respect of his teenage son. He sees real blood on the floor. Then it's gone.

A beautiful young man has a penchant for cutting himself in ritual sessions of self-abuse. Onstage in a nightclub, he dances provocatively for an older man. He could be a lover. Or a father. Or a stranger.

Faye, Kevin and Théo - three troubled strangers, three lives fractured by thoughts and acts of violence. In the interactive feature film Late Fragment, their narratives interlock in a unique cinematic experience in which you play a creative and interactive role. Navigating through the movie, you uncover their stories, and their secrets, at will, controlling the flow and direction of the elaborate sequencing with a simple click.

These characters, unknown to one another as well as to themselves, would never have met were it not for their participation in a series of Restorative Justice group sessions. In this process, perpetrators and victims of violent crime, broken by their lives, look for wholeness, balance, forgiveness, safety - and perhaps even redemption. In just such a setting, Faye, Kevin and Théo are compelled to confront their histories and unravel their secrets. The truth can be plain but it is not often simple.

Restorative Justice is one thing; personal amnesty, quite another. You, the audience, piece together, both literally and figuratively, the cinematic narrative in front of you.

Late Fragment allows you to watch the film in your own way. With a traditional film, the story unravels as the director intends. With this interactive film, you click enter on your remote control to change scenes. There are no page numbers or menus to chart your course: you decide which storylines you wish to follow, when you want to dig deeper into the history of a character, or when you want to move away. You become the director of the film you are watching. This is a completely new cinematic experience.

How do you know when to click your remote? As you watch the story unfold, there may be repeated scenes, pauses that may signal an interesting moment to click, or moments when you intuitively want to click. Every time you watch Late Fragment, you may learn new truths, uncover different histories, and piece together the film in new and very different ways.

In Late Fragment, Kevin, Théo and Faye attempt to piece together the fractured stories of their lives. They are on a quest to reconcile pasts haunted by violence and crime. As you interact with the film, you become part of the quest to uncover the darkness of their pasts, reveal the truths behind their lives, in hopes of restoring wholeness, forgiveness, and perhaps even redemption.

Daryl Cloran / Writer / Director

Daryl Cloran one of the three writer-directors of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film. A graduate of the CFC Media Lab's Interactive Art & Entertainment program, Queen's University and the New York Film Academy, Cloran co-founded Trapeze, a digital production studio dedicated to developing and creating interactive entertainment. He directed numerous interactive digital video productions for Trapeze, including Special Delivery, SafeHouse and White Noise.

An award-winning theatre director as well, Cloran is Artistic Director of Theatrefront. He has directed productions for the Shaw Festival, Soulpepper, CanStage, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Neptune Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Grand Theatre, Factory Theatre, the Sarajevo International Winter Festival and the Baxter Theatre Centre in South Africa, among others.

Winner of the Canada Council's John Hirsch Prize for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Director, the Toronto Theatre Emerging Artist Award and Halifax's Merritt Award for Outstanding Director, Cloran has received numerous Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations for his various productions.

Anita Doron / Writer / Director

Anita Doron is one of the three writer-directors of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film. Born in Transcarpathia, this published poet, competitive skier and high-altitude mountaineer made her first film - an environmental protest picture - at age 12, only to get in trouble with the soviet bureaucracy.

After an illegal escape from the USSR and life in the Middle East, Anita graduated from Ryerson University with two Norman Jewison Awards. Her first short film, Not a Fish Story, premiered at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. Her second short, Elliot Smelliot, a festival favourite, was broadcast on Showcase in 2005.

Mentored by renowned filmmakers Deepa Mehta and Patricia Rozema, Doron was named one of 10 to watch by NOW Magazine and received the Kodak New Vision Fellowship. Her first feature, The End of Silence, starring Sarah Harmer, is broadcast on TMN and is part of Mongrel Media's prestigious Festival Collection.

Mateo Guez / Writer / Director

Mateo Guez is one of the three writer-directors of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film.

A native of France, award-winning director, writer and producer Guez worked with Bernardo Bertolucci on The Dreamers (2002). He works in English and French, and in the past 10 years has written and directed several short films and documentaries that have screened around the world.

His last short film, L'Ultima Notte, won raves in 2003 and 2004 at such festivals as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

Guez has directed many music videos, such as Smokin' Lounge, featuring Canadian music icon Molly Johnson. For the last three years, he has worked with Motorola, directing films with mobile phones, such as Labour Day.

Mateo Guez is in development on his new feature film entitled Innocent, with producer Sandra Cunningham.

Krista Bridges / Faye

Genie-nominated Krista Bridges starred in the crime thriller Narc, with Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. Some of her many feature credits include Aurora Borealis with Donald Sutherland, George Romero's Land of the Dead, and the acclaimed Canadian features Saint Monica and Niagara Motel. Upcoming are roles in Lifetime's She Drives Me Crazy and Paolo Barzman's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Michael Healey / Kevin

Michael Healey, who starred in the acclaimed CBC series This Is Wonderland, is a Dora, Chalmers and Governor General's Award-winning playwright whose productions have been mounted in North America, Australia and Europe. Time Magazine, winner of the Helen Hayes Award for Best Play, was voted one of the top ten plays of the year by Time Magazine.

Jeffrey Parazzo / Théo

In 2003, Toronto-born Jeffrey Parazzo won the role of Trent Fernandez in the hit children's TV show Shoot 'Em Up, spending a year shooting in Auckland, New Zealand. He next appears in Shoot 'Em Up, the upcoming feature film starring Clive Owen, Monica Belucci and Paul Giamatti.

Peter MacNeill / Christian

Genie and Gemini Award-winner

One of Canada's most accomplished film and television actors, New Brunswick native Peter MacNeill had feature roles in Cinderella Man and A History of Violence. Well-known for his Gemini-winning role in CTV's The Eleventh Hour, he won a Genie for The Hanging Garden, and now has a recurring role in the new CW series Runaway.

Kim Coates / Hank

Saskatoon-born Kim Coates successfully entered the film and television industry in Canada, crossed the border to the U.S., and expanded his repertoire to almost 100 productions, including Black Hawk Down and Assault on Precinct 13. He has guest-starred on the megahits CSI and Prison Break, and garnered two Gemini nominations for his series work.

Tatiana Maslany / India

Tatiana Maslany, who moved from Regina to Toronto only two years ago, stars in two features in the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. Gemini-nominated for her recurring role in Renegade Press, she starred in CBC's acclaimed Booky Makes Her Mark. Maslany will play a supporting role in the soon-to-be-filmed feature, Flash of Genius starring Greg Kinnear.

Ana Serrano / Producer (CFC)

Ana Serrano, producer, executive producer and interactive architect of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film, is also the director of the CFC Media Lab, whose Interactive Narrative Feature Program (INFP) co-produced the movie with the National Film Board of Canada.

Serrano, winner of three 2003 Canadian New Media Awards, was selected the sole Canadian expert panel member for the 2003, 2005 and 2007 World Summit Awards, part of the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society. In 2000 she produced the Great Canadian Story Engine Project, a national tour and bilingual website comprising an interactive storytelling community for Canadians.

Named one of Maclean's magazine's "100 Canadians to Watch," Serrano, active on the boards of many companies involved in interactive entertainments, adjudicates awards, teaches at York University, and speaks at international venues about the emerging realms of interactive art and entertainment.

Anita Lee / Producer (NFB)

Anita Lee, one of the producers of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film, is a producer at the National Film Board of Canada. Prior to joining the NFB in 2005, Lee was an independent producer of award-winning films, including Proteus by John Greyson and The Art of Woo by Helen Lee. Her films, which have been nominated for multiple Gemini and Genie Awards, have screened worldwide, including at the Toronto International Film Festival, Berlin and Sundance. Her most recent film, The Bodybuilder and I (NFB/January Films), was awarded the Best Canadian Documentary Feature prize at Hot Docs. Lee is the founder of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.

Silva Basmajian / Executive Producer (NFB)

Currently Executive Producer for the Ontario Centre of the National Film Board of Canada, Silva Basmajian is one of the executive producers of Late Fragment, North America's first interactive feature film, co-produced with the Canadian Film Centre's New Media Lab.

Basmajian joined the NFB in 1976 and has since produced some 60 films, which have screened at more than 180 prestigious international festivals, including Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. Her productions have garnered Genies, Geminis, Banff Rockies and a Peabody Award.

In addition to her work in production, Basmajian has collaborated in the launch of a number of new and innovative projects, including the NFB's ground-breaking Filmmaker-in-Residence program and the award-winning Art of Seduction shorts for cell phones, co-produced with Marblemedia and Bravo!FACT. She was the NFB executive producer of both the Genie Award-winning film Manufactured Landscapes and House Calls, the Donald Brittain Award-winner for Best Social/Political Documentary at the 2006 Geminis.