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Bear 71, an interactive documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada (all screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic)
“There’s nothing natural about a grizzly bear using an overpass.” Yet the animal protagonist of Bear 71 VR, voiced by Mia Kirshner, has a life that is far from natural. The interactive documentary starts with a three-year-old grizzly bear’s snaring, tranquilizing, and collaring in Banff National Park, from which point her every step is known. Her navigation of the barbed wire that cuts through her path in Alberta’s Bow Valley is filmed by a trail cam, her winding movement around roads, railways, and humans is broadcast by the radio collar.
Initially launched in 2012 as a Flash-based site, with an installation at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Bear 71 was rereleased earlier this year as a virtual reality experience. The free online version was developed through a partnership between the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Google as one of the earliest experiments with Google’s new WebVR for Chrome desktop and Daydream View headsets. It was conceived of by filmmaker Leanne Allison, who also created the 2005 documentary feature Being Caribou, in which she and her husband Karsten Heuer followed the migration of a caribou herd in the context of Arctic drilling.
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Source: HyperAllergic