You Are Here (2010 film)

You Are Here
Film poster
Directed byDaniel Cockburn[1]
Written byDaniel Cockburn
Produced byDaniel Cockburn
Daniel Bekerman[1]
Starring
CinematographyCabot McNenly
Edited byDuff Smith[1]
Music byRick Hyslop[1]
Production
companies
ZeroFunction Productions,
Scythia Films[1]
Distributed byPacific Northwest Pictures[2]
Release dates
  • 10 August 2010 (2010-08-10) (Locarno)
  • 15 September 2010 (2010-09-15) (TIFF)
Running time
78 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
BudgetC$100,000[note 1]

You Are Here is a 2010 Canadian philosophical speculative fiction film written and directed by video artist Daniel Cockburn, which he also co-produced with Daniel Bekerman. Cockburn's first feature film is "hyper-inventive and categorically hard-to-describe",[4] initially billed as a "Borgesian fantasy" or a "meta-detective story",[1] and later as "part experimental gallery film and part philosophical sketch comedy."[5] In You Are Here, Cockburn makes use of the techniques and concepts he had honed over the previous decade as an experimental video artist with "a narrative bent",[6] and "works them into a complex and unique cinematic structure."[7] The film mainly follows a woman (Tracy Wright, who died of cancer seven weeks before the film was released)[8] searching for the meaning behind a series of audiovisual documents from other universes,[1] seemingly left purposefully for her to find, some of which are shown as vignettes concerning figures such as the Lecturer (R.D. Reid) and the Experimenter (Anand Rajaram) interspersed throughout the film. She finds so many of them that they fill a space which she calls the Archive, and herself its Archivist. In time, the Archive appears to resist her attempts at cataloguing and organizing it, and she receives a cell phone instead of the usual document, leading to a fateful encounter with others.

The film features music composed by Rick Hyslop and visual effects by Robert James Spurway,[1] and makes use of excerpts from films by fellow Canadian filmmaker John Price.[9] It has been presented at over forty film festivals worldwide, and compared to the works of Charlie Kaufman, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick.[10] The film is a recipient of both the Jay Scott Prize in 2010, and the EMAF Award in 2011, and with few exceptions, has been received enthusiastically by critics.

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "You Are Here press kit" (PDF). www.you-are-here-movie.com/. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
  2. ^ "You Are Here (2011)". Traction Media. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  3. ^ "Panorama Specials Daniel Cockburn #2: You Are Here – Q&A" (video). Impakt Festival Reports - Impakt Festival 2011. Impakt Festival. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  4. ^ Woodard, Josef (3 February 2011). "Further Adventures on the 'Stan Plan SBIFF Entries from Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Canada". Santa Barbara Independent. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  5. ^ "A Cinema of Forking Paths: You Are Here (2010) - Screening and Q & A with director Daniel Cockburn as part of the curated film season 'A Cinema of Forking Paths – Films Inspired by Borges'". www.thehorsehospital.com. Horse Hospital Cinema. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  6. ^ Whyte, Jason (interviewer). "Whistler Film Festival Interview - "You Are Here" director Daniel Cockburn". eFilmCritic. Retrieved 19 January 2019. {{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  7. ^ "Daniel Cockburn". Vtape. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
  8. ^ Wilner, Norman (11 September 2010). "Tracy Wright's fine, final performance: You Are Here's director Daniel Cockburn describes working with Tracy Wright". Now. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
  9. ^ Nayman, Adam (21 September 2010). "The Antisocial Network: Daniel Cockburn's You Are Here". Cinema Scope. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  10. ^ "Film Practice Research Fellowships". School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. Queen Mary University of London. Retrieved 19 January 2019.


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