Our everyday lives, hopes and dreams are juxtaposed against the tectonic shifts of the planet in Claire Sanford and Josephine Anderson's powerful National Film Board of Canada (NFB) immersive experience Texada, making its world premiere in the DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA DocLab), taking place November 8 to 19.
To make Texada, Sanford and Anderson merged live-action footage filmed across the remote mining community of Texada Island in British Columbia's Georgia Strait with 3D animation of geologic upheaval, creating an impressionistic, poetic experience.
Real and imagined landscapes document a journey through the Earth's formation to the current moment, in which the everyday stuff of human existence is combined with cyclical patterns of creation, extinction and renewal. As geologic forces continue to unfold, the only constant is transformation. Yet amongst the great heave of history, glimpses of temporal beauty help us understand our place in the universe.
Texada is produced by Dana Dansereau and Nicholas Klassen and executive produced by Rob McLaughlin for the NFB's English Program Animation & Interactive Studio in Vancouver.
Quotes
"We take ourselves very seriously, but eventually, all of us humans will vanish into the folds of the Earth's history. Our intention in making Texada was to grapple with this complicated reality, and to imaginatively stretch the limits of how we view the world and our place within it."
- Claire Sanford and Josephine Anderson, directors
"In Texada, Claire, Josephine and wickedly talented artists and developers at Charm Games have managed something unique, to make me contemplate human existence on this planet. That might sound aggrandizing, but it isn't; this immersive experience creates a moment to step outside the political, social and, frankly, chaotic world we live in. It speaks to the fragile beauty of everyday life and intricate complexity of our everchanging ecosystem. I can't help but ponder what happened for us to get here and what will happen as we leave."
- Dana Dansereau, producer
About the directors
- Claire Sanford is a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and video artist whose work explores the natural world, human identity and how they overlap. Her projects have been exhibited internationally at film festivals and galleries, including IDFA, DOC NYC, Hot Docs and TIFF's Canada's Top Ten, and shown on online platforms such as Vimeo Staff Picks.
- Based in Vancouver, documentary director Josephine Anderson works across film and interactive genres to address such themes as time, irreverence and female experience. Her work has screened at festivals internationally, including Tribeca and IDFA, and has been presented by The New Yorker Documentary, Vimeo Staff Picks, CBC and the Canada Council for the Arts. She previously worked with the NFB on the 2021 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards short film Starlight & Other Sounds: The music of Alexina Louie.
