As part of the venerable New York Film Festival, Convergence is a mini-event, a celebration of the short form documentary film that takes place over a weekend.

The convergence, or crossroads, here is the intersection of documentary filmmaking, art and technology, and the search for innovative methods of presenting a true story on film while having an impact on the social issues the film depicts. The crowd for Convergence, this year, was decidedly black-clad and low key, with lots of horn-rimmed glasses, sneakers and unruly hairstyles. They crowded the screening room for projects like The Empire Project, about the ongoing legacy of Dutch colonialism, and No More Road Trips, director Rick Prelinger’s participatory take on highways of the past. This was a meeting between tech nerds, journalists and artists, all taking steps along the shaky road to a new kind of documentary filmmaking.

A Short History of the Highrise is a collaboration of the National Film Board of Canada and an arm of the New York Times called Op-Docs, which touts itself as committed to making “opinionated” short documentary films. It manages to fit 2,500 years of vertical living into a matter of minutes, cutting across both architectural history and the changing social strata occupying the structures. Starting with the Romans, it plots the course of our creating abodes, one on top of the other, through everything from ancient slave quarters to the most expensive contemporary Manhattan cooperative, from Central Park West to centuries-old mud apartment buildings in Yemen. The film is divided into four sections (Mud, Concrete, Glass and Home) charting the human evolution from primitive life to an awareness of the home as a life center.

Made to be viewed best on a tablet device, where one can enlarge or otherwise manipulate imagery, A Short History uses pop-ups, photographs and an unusual series of voiceovers by Canadian pop personalities, like Feist, a singer-songwriter known for her solo work and also with the group Broken Social Scene. The visuals include buildings exploding from other, earlier ones; other buildings erupting into fire; cities growing up suddenly from thick forests; and still photographs from the NY Times’ photo morgue showing specific living conditions, such as crowded early tenements in New York City.

The script is written in rhyme and so pulls a viewer into it, much like a nursery verse or a lullaby — only this time the technique might be termed painless education. It is visually compelling and quick-moving, almost to the point of losing its message — but not quite. In an “interactive” moment after the film, with the producers and director going over the interactive elements and asking for feedback (we used to call this “questions from the audience”), one man said very clearly that A Short History was “beautiful,” but questioned its reason for being, it’s central point — what was it? The intrepid Canadian director, Katerina (Kat) Cizek, known for another documentary she co-directed entitled Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, said without skipping a beat, “Well, it’s meant to be enjoyable.”

And enjoyable it was. Cizek says her inspiration came from children’s storybooks, and each film segment is meant to be viewed as a chapter in a whole story. However, what is there beyond enjoyable? The film is reductive, hitting on high notes without much heft, but also touching on serious issues that appear almost as subliminal messages, such as class distinction and the change in attitudes through the centuries concerning living conditions and status. As such, it may look a bit cartoonish to the uninitiated, more like an outline than a full-fledged piece, however good-looking and innovative. This may be a bellwether for the independence that will be required to learn things in-depth in an Internet-based world. A Short History of the Highrise inspires and asks the questions, but a viewer will have to do his or her own homework afterward to find the deeper answers.

Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

“A Short History of the Highrise” had its worldwide premiere at the New York Film Festival. For more information concerning this project and viewing opportunities, please visit http://highrise.nfb.ca/ and http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/high-rise/.

Trailer for A Short History of the Highrise

Trailer Courtesy of: National Film Board of Canada and The New York Times.

Making-of Morgue Video Clip

Video Courtesy of: National Film Board of Canada and The New York Times.

Cincopa WordPress plugin

Featured image: (L-R) Jason Spingarn-Koff, Jacqueline Myint, Kat Cizek, Gerry Flahive, NFB Chairperson Tom Perlmutter. Photo Credit: Casey Kelbaugh for the New York Times.