Audience Controls The Action In Fest Film Late Fragment

It’s a film unlike any other at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Late Fragment, produced by the Canadian Film Centre and the National Film Board of Canada, is an interactive feature that allows viewers to determine the course of the film with a few clicks of the remote. A first in North America, the film has three acts, nine chapters, three endings, and 139 scenes – which scenes you choose to watch, and the way the three major storylines progress, is up to the viewer.

“If you notice a lot of the best films that have come out right now are actually about these multi-linear plot lines,” explains Ana Serrano, director of the CFC’s Media Lab. “If you look at Babel for instance, the story frame is: an object touches the lives of four people and it has ramifications across their lives. If you look at Crash an event touches the lives of three or four people and it has this causal effect.”

For this film, which was the inaugural project of the CFC Media Lab’s Interactive Narrative Feature Program, Serrano and co-producer Anita Lee of the NFB wanted to employ a different writer-director for each major storyline. They knew that’d make it difficult in terms of linking the three main characters’ stories together, so they used the concept of Restorative Justice to tie them together. Restorative Justice is a form of therapy for criminals and victims of crime, where they will get together and talk about their stories.

Late Fragment’s three protagonists Kevin (Michael Healey), Faye (Krista Bridges) and Théo (Jeff Parazzo) have all been intimately connected with violence, and as such are involved in the therapy sessions. But we don’t know initially whether they have committed crimes or been victims of them until the story begins to unfold. Daryl Cloran, Anita Doron and Mateo Guez were given the task of each focusing on one of the characters, always keeping in mind the film’s puzzle-like concept.

“The one interesting thing about all three writer-directors is their comfort with ambiguity,” Serrano explains. “I think that is one of the key things in working with interactive film is that you need to be able to work in subtle or ambiguous ways. You’re never telling your story straight. You’re always telling it slightly grey.”

Guez, who wrote and directed Théo’s story, about a male stripper forced to confront his disturbing past, concedes there were challenges in working with two other directors on a film.

“When you’re a director you can easily become a diva and surrounded by your own huge ego,” the French-born filmmaker notes. “So when you’re working with two other writer-directors you have to think about sharing and put your ego on the side.”

But when it came to telling some of the more difficult parts of what happened to Théo as a youngster Guez was less willing to compromise.

“I said ‘I’m not going to go halfway. I’m going to go for it or I’m not going to go for it,'” he says. “And so they said, ‘Okay you have carte blanche.'”

Actor Parazzo says the most difficult part of shooting had nothing to do with the concept but with understanding his character’s feelings of loneliness.

“The last month I booked myself into an apartment that had no TV or anything and I locked myself in isolation,” he said. “Only when I really needed to talk to someone would I call someone. That helped me get to the place (I needed to be).”

For the cinematic screenings at the festival, a pre-set storyline will be shown, however the hope is that Late Fragment will have a successful life on DVD where viewers can control the action and experience the film as its meant to be seen.

Late Fragment, screening at TIFF07:

Wednesday, September 12th / 7pm, 9pm, 11pm
Camera Bar
1028 Queen Street West
Must be 18 years or older to attend

(Jeff Parazzo in a scene from Late Fragment – image courtesy NFB)

Laptop courtesy LG