For years people have tried to stretch the boundaires of cinema by attempting to make the expereince more "interactive", from "Smell-O-Vision" to William Castle's Percepto.  At this years festival two Canadian movies usher the "interactive film" into the modern age.  "Late Fragment" and "The Soft Revolution" both approach cinema in a new way, allowing the viewer to determine their own experience.  Both point to a future form of cinema, one that melds film, video games and new media into a new style of narrative.

Here's an interview with one of the creators of "The Soft Revolution", Anthony Roberts (pictured with co-creator Brian Johnson).  

Jesse: Where did the idea for The Soft Revolution come from?

Anthony: I had this idea about Charlie,

a 1970?s social revolutionary who had a fantastic eco-utopian vision, and then disappeared, leaving behind this beautiful unfinished manifesto called The Soft Revolution that if properly interpreted, could transform the world. Even though he?s been gone for over two decades, Charlie?s presence and his Taoist, Fuller-esque ideas continue to resonate with his family and friends. I thought it would be interesting to make a vignette-based movie with a randomized structure about the key experiences of a year in the life of this fairly ordinary Gulf-Island family whose members are all, in their own ways, searching for some kind of transcendence. Using the I Ching as a game interface was seen as a way that would allow audience members some control to advance or digress the narrative, leading the viewer deeper into the lives of these characters while simultaneously drawing them into closer contact with themselves.

Jesse: How did the I Ching influence your approach to the film?

Anthony: The Taoist I-Ching (also known as the Book of Changes) provided a cohesive structure to frame the story and characters within the four seasons of nature. It?s a metaphor for natural processes, and the way those are reflected in human social interactions.  As everything is in a process of change, and is constantly evolving, I thought it would be visually stimulating and thematically accurate to the I-Ching to frame pivotal experiences of the characters? lives within the seasons of nature over the course of a year.

I felt the natural metaphors of Taoism fit brilliantly with the visionary ideas of the disappeared revolutionary character Charlie. The guiding principles of his soft revolution were to establish local economies of eco-technologies, free education, renewable energy, and self-managed organically planned communities in harmony with nature. Charlie was known to associate with the Cascadian Liberation Front (CLF), a bio-regionalist group opposing a homogeneous global economy and consumer culture because that culture ignored a dependency on the natural world.

The I-Ching is an ancient form of divination and a randomness-generating mechanism that can be played by throwing three coins six times to generate one of its 64 parables. For thousands of years it has inspired thoughts about the nature of chaos and causality and was often a way that Brian and I generated ideas for what a scene was to be about.

I wanted the experience of interacting with the movie to solicit a similar type of ?divine guidance? as in consulting the I Ching oracle. Thus the randomly generated parable-scenes could be seen as a tool for analyzing the randomness of both human interaction and natural phenomena.

The I-Ching has always had the reputation of an oracle that has the power to unlock doors to the inner self ? I thought it would be a useful experiment to see if a user playing The Soft Revolution could feel a similar kind of reflective inner satisfaction after choosing a parable-scene.

Jesse: While using The Soft Revolution it reminded me a little bit of the interface for video games, and there's a feeling of challenge to the act of using it.  How do you see the intersection of video games and movies?

Anthony: By engaging in multiple character narratives by choosing scenes or generating them randomly, The Soft Revolution allows viewers to take control of the viewing of a movie narrative. Using the I-Ching as an interface would probably qualify The Soft Revolution as an interactive game, although I see it?s ?payoff? as reflective and psychological rather than simply action-driven. You don?t actually enter into a virtual environment and start poking around in it with your controller as in a videogame. With The Soft Revolution we don?t ask our audience to become a character, but to look at the character and her actions to compare and examine themselves with an inquiry:  i.e. ? ?would I have done that or not?? The usefulness of narrative is when you understand and empathize with a character you see you begin to examine yourself. When you?re so close to the action in a videogame you?re not carefully observing yourself.

Jesse: In all the times you have interacted with The Soft Revolution, what has surprised you the most?

Anthony: What has surprised me the most is the way that the story feels different every time. Because of the software program underlying the piece, a particular combination of parable-scenes and abstract sequences will never occur the same way twice - and the amount of time it has taken for the movie to play the essential scenes and reach its conclusion has ranged between an hour and twenty minutes to over four hours long. Some people get exasperated by all the different narrative pathways and would rather just charge straight ahead into a linear telling of the story, while a surprisingly large number of other viewers appear to want to experience as much digression and randomness as possible. It?s interesting to note that there will always be people in the audience that abstain from playing the piece and let others determine where the story goes. Perhaps these people are accustomed to watching traditional linear movies, or they?re too shy to interact with our movie, or they would rather observe how The Soft Revolution changes without their input ? and that?s completely valid.

Jesse: Finally, how do you see the future of interactive cinema experiences like The Soft Revolution?

Anthony: I see a growing and exciting future for interactive cinema. The increasing sophistication of technology and the special interests of individuals suggest hybridized forms of cinema that use concepts derived from video games and other forms of interactivity. The Internet is a compelling arena for experiments in user interaction. The swift growth of websites like Second Life that allow users to explore virtual environments with other participants will probably yield experiences and perceptions that we?ve only dreamed of before. Or maybe we haven?t imagined it yet. I think these new forms will continue to influence and compliment traditional cinema and yet I hope these structures will never replace it. I feel that there will always be something humanly appealing to the experience of watching a movie in a theatre environment with a massive screen and great sound. We have a deeply engrained human need to engage with and try to understand narrative and the collective film-going experience can be extremely satisfying in meeting these requirements. When a lot of people are in the same room watching a movie together the film can generate a lot of emotion and this emotion is contagious. As well, the warm, reflective quality of film remains far superior visually to the emissions from a video screen. But no matter the medium, a good story will always find an audience.

This is and "Late FRagment" are both must sees at this year's festival

http://tiff07.ca/filmsandschedules/futureprojections/