In the midst of an Edmonton deep-freeze, Mariah heads out. Every day, before dawn, while everyone else is sound asleep, she gets ready for her daily deliveries. Mariah is a bike courier, one of a handful of winter cycling snow warriors on Edmonton’s busy downtown streets.
Navigating a beautiful yet dangerous landscape, she shares ice-covered roads with cars and trucks. As the weather changes and the chill intensifies, flesh freezes and the challenges multiply.
Racing through snow and weaving through traffic, Mariah proves her strength, dedication, and capacity for joy. Extreme temperatures, violent winds, slippery roads and snowstorms do not stop a snow warrior.
Returning home in the dark, she dreams of another day doing battle with the elements. She loves her job.
Directed by Frederick Kroetsch and Kurt Spenrath, Snow Warrior is a love letter to winter, revelling in the embrace of the ghostly white shroud that defines the character of the people of the North.
East of the Rockies is an interactive narrative AR experience told from the perspective of Yuki, a 17-year-old girl forced from her home and made to live in one of Canada’s Japanese internment camps.
The story follows Yuki as she and her family adjust to their new reality inside the Slocan internment camp. They experience good times as well as bad, as they work to make life inside the camp as normal as possible.
Interaction comes from tapping, swiping, inspecting and zooming in on key elements within each scene. Every interaction activates a piece of scripted narrative spoken by acclaimed writer Joy Kogawa’s own granddaughter, Anne. Spoken in the first person, each line illuminates a different aspect of life in the camp, as documented in Yuki’s journal.