EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL OSNABRUECK 2011 - Emaf

With that broadly conceived mindgame, he launches a seriously heavy look at the elusive nature of identity.
Shifting to a new setting every few minutes, he makes it difficult to contemplate any given strand for too long,
extending the laser pointer challenge to an endlessly boggling structure. Unless, as another character explicitly
informs us in the opening scene, that’s precisely not what we’re supposed to do.
You Are Here is a Borgesian fantasy composed of multiple worlds, circling and weaving around each other in always-unexpected
ways. At the centre of this narrative labyrinth is a reclusive woman (Tracy Wright) who searches
for meaning in the mysterious documents that keep appearing to her. Her investigation begins when she
finds a tape recording of a man giving a bizarre lecture: calming and sinister at the same time, he instructs how
to ›get where you need to go‹. Is this a random find, or a message to her? Another strange document presents
itself, and another… Swiftly her home becomes an archive brimming with enigmatic texts, images and sounds.
She forms deep connections with the people contained in these documents -- the Lecturer, a Prisoner, an Inventor
-- each of them, like her, struggling with the unknowable laws of their own worlds.
But the organized becomes the organizer when her meticulous system turns on her; the archive is a trickster
threatening to pull her mind apart. As realities collapse and intersect around her, she must make a final choice:
is she a free agent, or just a tool of the archive?‹
Innovative in form and unique in its content, YOU ARE HERE is an intellectually adventurous movie that explores
the nature of consciousness, the relationship between technology and our sense of self, and what happens to
a mind when it spends too long inside an experiment of its own devising.
›Inventive and multi -layered , You Are Here is a brilliantly organized first feature full of philosophical ideas and
tremendous energy.‹ – Atom Egoyan
Daniel Cockburn first learned about film through his high-school job as a video store clerk in his home town of
Tweed, ON. He has been producing short experimental videos for 10 years, which have shown at over 80 festivals
and galleries worldwide; a retrospective screening is currently touring internationally. He was one of three directors
worldwide selected for the 2009 DAAD-Berlin filmmaker residency, and is a participant in the Toronto International
Film Festival's 2010 Talent Lab. Daniel has several film projects in development as well as artist projects:
including an installation with Brenda Goldstein called ›Disaster Animals‹, and a docu-fiction about film criticism;
critics/filmmakers interested in participating can email: criticalmass.movie@gmail.com
�CDN 2010, Format , 80:00
�Written and Directed by Daniel Cockburn
�Produced by Daniel Bekerman, Daniel Cockburn
�Director of Photography Cabot McNenly
�Production Designer Nazgol Goshtasbpour
�Editor Duff Smith
�Music Rick Hyslop
�Visual Effects Robert James Spurway
�Additional archival material Jonathon Hunter, Daniel Cockburn, Cabot McNenly,
Duff Smith, Simon Willms, John Price, Brenda Goldstein
�Cast Tracy Wright, R.D. Reid, Anand Rajaram, Nadia Capone,
Hardee Lineham, Peter Solala and many more
�Distribution zeroFunction Productions
93