The future of cinema will not be defined by a single direction. Old genres will live alongside new genres. But it is increasingly becoming clear that at least one of these directions will take the form of cinema as some kind of participatory experience, where the audience of one or many may impact how a narrative unfolds itself over space or time. These new forms should not be reduced as simply "choose your own adventure" models but instead should be seen as the coming to life of post-modern preoccupations with multiplicity, diversity, open-endedness, spatial conceptions of self, and story puzzles explicitly expressed through interactive technology.
Late Fragment is an interactive film that lets audiences piece together, both literally and figuratively, the cinematic narrative in front of them. The physical experience is not unlike channel surfing in front of the television, except imagine that each channel presents different scenes from the same story. Sitting on the couch, remote control in hand, audiences can click "enter" on their remote control, and impact the way the story unfolds, sequencing the events of the story depending on when and how often they click "enter." Late Fragment is like many of the non-linear movies we have come to love including Crash, Short Cuts, and Amores Perros. But with Late Fragment audiences now impact what scene they may get next.
Interactive narrative has been explored in many different ways by artists, filmmakers, and designers from all over the world. From Mike Figgis' Timecode to Peter Greenaway's VJ Tulse Luper Performance, from Lev Manovich's Soft Cinema, to Marsha Kinder's Bleeding Through the Layers of Los Angeles. But with the numerous experiments in form, interactive structure and interface designs, Late Fragment was most inspired by Switching, an interactive film directed by Morten Schjodt of Oncotype and produced by the Danish Film Institute.
While the notion of interactive cinema is not entirely new, Late Fragment is North America's first interactive dramatic feature film and is an important model of collaboration in leading-edge experimental dramatic content and format that will be engrained into Canada's filmmaking history.