I love Hanne-Lovise Skarstein’s interactive documentary from the F-train in New York. Hanne-Lovise has been working on interactive documentaries here in Bergen for a few years now, but moved to Brooklyn last year. Take the F-train is a beautiful little documentary which combines video of the place with audio interviews and animations of the characters in the piece. You put the characters you want to ride with into the train, and then you can listen to their stories by mousing over them while inside. Most of their stories are about being from elsewhere and yet being at home in New York City. At least most of the ones in languages I can understand were. I was particularly happy to find Hanne-Lovise herself as one of the characters in her own story. There’s an interview with her discussing the piece too, in Norwegian.
Her piece is part of Digitale Fortellinger, a series of new, Norwegian, digital stories sponsored by Norsk kulturrÂd, PNEK, BEK and NRK.
Ali
Wonderful – but my Norwegian is very limited. Have they done an English version too?
Jill
Well, most of the audio is in English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese – only Hanne-Lovise’s own character speaks Norwegian. And the text, which is in Norwegian, is very minimal. I think you’d get a lot out of it even with no Norwegian.
Hanne-Lovise
Thanks for your words about the F-train, Jill – glad you liked it! Actually, we just decided to put out an English texted version too, even if, as you say, I also think you can enjoy it without. It will probably be posted next week, with a link from the page where the interview is ( http://www.nrk.no/magasin/ulyd/5557216.html – the link you posted is broken, Jill 🙂