Digital flames: public storytelling, climate, and reconciliation at National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Public storytelling carries social responsibility during ecological breakdown and war. This article examines three National Film Board of Canada (NFB) projects – Biidaaban: First Light (Lisa Jackson), Bear 71 (Leanne Allison with Jeremy Mendes), and Losing Blue (Leanne Allison) – and shows how they cultivate attention, relation, and action. The analysis builds on the Canadian aporetic condition (see Bessai) and Albert Murray’s stylization of experience, which shape perception into shareable form and civic practice. Across web, VR, and cinema, the projects present complexity with restraint and organize learning through voice, tempo, mapping, and sequence. Biidaaban models language resurgence in a VR Tkaronto foregrounding Anishinaabemowin place-names; Bear 71 renders an interactive corridor ecology and turns surveillance traces into civic reflection; Losing Blue witnesses the life of ice through steady images and measured narration linked to field knowledge. The article outlines design principles for public-service storytelling in a climate emergency – proximity, reciprocity, slowness, invitational structure, continuity, and accountability – and specifies institutional routes for use in classrooms, libraries, festivals, and the open web. NFB infrastructure supports commissioning, curation, and circulation that keep works available for study and practice. These projects equip audiences with shared language and habits of attention that aid collective response to climate and conflict.