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Rabbits aren’t the only ones with 360 degree vision

Today, filmmaking tools are so accessible and easy to use that experimental approaches to storytelling have become hugely prevalent. In the hands of someone with little concern for traditional cinema techniques, even the most mundane of subjects can appear hypnotic. Using such tools to find beauty in the most seemingly bland, seedy or even dangerous parts of our cities is a growing theme.This approach is prevalent in the new multimedia, collaborative umbrella project Highrise, set up by the National Film Board of Canada. A project that aims to blow all traditional definitions of the documentary genre out of the window.

Highrise’s first project is led by filmmaker Katerina Cizek, who has been capturing her urban experiences on a 360° camera. Spending time in Toronto, Cizek has been shooting staff and patients in city hospitals, riding along with police, and working with a group of homeless women.

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Cizek’s film is soon to be released as a full feature-length web documentary, but it is only one of many personal views in the Highrise project which also represents web-based excerpts, still photography, video and texts. Keep up to date with the now and future city at the Highrise here.

Ideas of people colliding, living vertically, engulfed in metropolises, are also brought to life epically and experimentally in filmmaker and artist Timo Novotny’s audio visual film Life in Loops. The film pays homage to director Michael Glawogger, by remixing his cult and unique vision of urban sprawl Megacities.

A real treat for the eyes, Life in Loops uses unused footage from Megacities, and is remixed with original work to create a very different mood and tempo from Glawogger’s original. Loops captures the dark corners of city’s straining under the weight of too much humanity in too small a space: Mumbai, Mexico City, Tokyo and New York City. An electronic soundtrack acts as a companion to Novotny’s pulsating visuals, which flip between a sterile airport in Tokyo, an overcrowded train station in the sweltering heat of Mumbai and the harsh reality of homeless children in the Moscow snow.

Watch Life in Loops in full here.