
Past, Present, and Future
Based at the University of Windsor, the SSHRC-funded Docum’istory Project (2011-2016) sought to inform documentary practices by engaging the theories and methods of academic history. Crossing film and media arts with the humanities, our aim was—and continues to be—challenging audiences to interact with audiovisual history critically and in new ways. This project initiated an ongoing collaboration between filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, historians, and students, exploring filmic methods that engage reflexivity, observation, and performance. The results of this work included creative, methodological, and theoretical outputs, culminating in the launch of an i-doc (interactive documentary) hosted on this site from 2016 to 2024, garnering more than 22,000 discrete visits.
The work started by the Docum’istory Project generated a documentary feature, a mid-length documentary, an internationally broadcast and streamed CBC feature-length audio documentary, a mid-length documentary that aired nationally on the CBC, live documentary performances in the US and Canada, three peer-reviewed publications, a monograph, an edited book, a fellowship at the Cinema Research Institute (CRI) at the Tisch School for the Arts, NYU (2015-2016) for project Director Kim Nelson, and the training of undergraduate and graduate students in film and history from 2012 to the present.
This work served as a critical step to developing a novel form of audience-engaged expanded cinema: the Live Interactive Documentary. A model and platform that our team developed further through the auspices of the SSHRC-funded Live Documentary Project (2019-2024). We are currently expanding these outcomes into a practice of Social Cinema as a site-specific form of film exhibition that fosters audience engagement and community-building in real-time and space. Please go to the Live Documentary Project website to learn more about our project in its current iteration.
This site hosted the interactive documentary 130 Year Road Trip from 2016 to 2024. A design collaboration between the Documentary Project and Elev8 Web Studio, the i-doc prompted audiences to tap or click to open a page, allowing them to assemble and watch the film in their own order, with narrative options provided at the end of each chosen clip. Over 22,000 visitors responded to this invitation.
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