Re-Enchantment

An immersive journey into the hidden world of fairy tales

Re-enchantment is an interactive multi-platform documentary project exploring why fairy stories continue to enchant, entertain, fascinate and horrify contemporary adult* audiences. It combines rich content with state of the art animation design and is immersive, interactive, community building and delivered as a multi-platform experience including on-line, television and radio. Available on ABC Online in the form of an immersive multimedia web site, as well as on ABC Television as a series of short 3-minute films, Re-enchantment allows the user to experience a sense of discovery and mystery as they uncover the secret stories behind our favourite fairy tales.

Project Description

Fairy tales are incredibly popular and well suited to an interactive landscape. The stories shape-shift over time and throughout cultures. They are mysterious. They can be entered from many angles and in different media. They are full of motifs and symbols. They can be interpreted in a multitude of ways that lend themselves to a multi-platform approach. Traditional fairy tales have a powerful hold on our cultural imagination. Adapted, revised and bowdlerised, they greet us in print and popular fiction, as a reality TV show to find an Australian princess, at the movies as Pan?s Labyrinth, Fur, Sex and the City and in advertisements for everything from Chanel to Moccona Coffee. They have been reworked by visual artists and photographers from Cindy Sherman and Corinna Sargood to Paula Rego and Rosemary Valadon. Rather than stripping away the mystery and enchantment, Re-enchantment shows how threading together various interpretations and versions of a story from the perspectives of psychology, social history and popular culture, deepens our connection to and fascination with the richness of fairy tales. Re-enchantment has been three years in the making and is groundbreaking in its originality and its scope. It is a poetic and provocative act of creative interpretation of fairy tales, bringing together digital video, documentary footage, feature film sequences, advertising, cartooning, photography, animation, artwork, still images and sound. The Re-Enchantment project: for Rosemary’s work go to Menu - Cinderella-Fairy Godmother / Menu - Red Riding Hood-Hand:sexuality

Written and Directed by Sarah Gibson Produced by Sue Maslin