Katerina Cizek facts for kids
Katerina Cizek is a Canadian filmmaker who makes cool documentaries, especially ones that use digital technology. She's a leader in creating new ways to tell stories online. She is also a co-founder and director at the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab. This is a special place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where people explore new ways to make documentaries.
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Exploring Life in High-Rise Buildings
From 2008 to 2015, Katerina Cizek directed a big project called Highrise for the National Film Board of Canada. This series looked at what life is like for people living in tall apartment buildings, also known as skyscrapers.
Out My Window and One Millionth Tower
One of the first projects was Out My Window (2010). It was the world's first 360-degree web documentary. This means you could look all around the virtual space as if you were there! It won the first-ever IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling and an International Digital Emmy Award.
Another cool project was One Millionth Tower (2011). This webdoc let users explore a high-rise complex in 3D virtual space. People living in Toronto could even redesign their own neighborhoods in this virtual world.
A Short History of the Highrise
A Short History of the Highrise is an interactive documentary. It explores the 2,500-year history of people living in tall buildings around the world. It also looks at how fair things are for everyone in our growing cities.
The main part of this project was four short films directed by Cizek. These films were called Mud, Concrete, and Glass. They used old pictures from The New York Times and brought them to life with amazing animation. The fourth film, Home, was made using pictures sent in by regular people. This project won a Peabody Award in 2014 and a News & Documentary Emmy Award later that year.
Universe Within
The final part of the Highrise project was called Universe Within. Katerina Cizek worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create it. She explored how new technology changes the lives of people in suburban high-rise communities.
Universe Within won the award for Best Original Interactive Production at the 4th Canadian Screen Awards in 2016. It also received a Webby Award for Online Film & Video/Best Use of Interactive Video at the 2016 Webby Awards.
Filmmaker in a Hospital
Before the Highrise series, Katerina Cizek directed another interesting project. It was called Filmmaker-in-Residence. This documentary project explored life inside St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. It was a crossmedia project, meaning it used different types of media to tell the story. This project also won a Webby Award for Best Documentary Series.
Teaching and Research
Katerina Cizek is now leading a new research and production project at MIT Open Documentary Lab. She also teaches about new ways to create documentaries using digital media. She has worked with professors and researchers to study how cities are changing and how technology affects people's lives.
About Katerina Cizek
Katerina Cizek was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Her parents were immigrants from the Czech Republic. Today, she lives in Toronto. She studied anthropology at McGill University in Montreal. Before joining the National Film Board of Canada, she worked as an independent filmmaker. Her father, Jiří Čížek, was a physics professor at the University of Waterloo. He was known for his work in Coupled cluster theory.
