If These Streets Could Talk

Location-mapped, interactive immersive AR/MR documentary on the streets of the former Jewish quarter.

 

Website:

if-these-streets.org

Synopsis

When someone – either a local or a tourist – walking today in Budapest’s Rumbach street says “Let’s get a drink!”, they are unaware that in 1944, it was that particular street that hosted the Budapest Ghetto’s last working water tap, providing the last drips of hope for 80,000 entrapped Hungarian jews. When they are checking out hip clothes in the nearby vintage store, they miss out on the story: in 1944 that store was a manufactory of a Christian dyer who hid 100 jews in his workshop to save them from deportation.

When history becomes invisible, history is forgotten. If These Streets Could Talk makes the invisible story of European capitals' Jewish history visible.

You stand on Budapest’s Király street with a phone in your hand. As you start the experience, Jakab Weiss, who – as you learn – is your uncle starts talking to you, excitedly: “You can’t remember this, but not too long ago, Budapest was a thriving Jewish capital. This, where you are, was the Jewish “main street”. See that corner? That’s where your father and I ran our little photography store. Go there, it’s open now!”. As you look around with your device, localized overlays bring back the street to the 1910s. It’s a time travel. You see dozens of small shops, all Jewish, mothers appear as holograms, with their babies in strollers, Jewish men with milk crates and with Torahs, all very busy: a typical everyday moment from the 1910s. When you get to the shop, your uncle’s hologram greets you and takes a portrait of you (...).

Through a series of interactions, you explore 3 distinct streets and 3 distinct eras. Your uncle stays with you as a guide but you play the main role, interacting with your environment. From the thriving golden era of the early 1900s Jewish Budapest to the 1944 Ghetto and the 1945 liberation of the Ghetto (the end of the experience), you go through your journey encountering milestones that a typical Hungarian jew has, and you experience key historical events that happened in those particular streets and at those particular buildings that you are physically at.

While the pilot chapter of the project takes place in Budapest, using the R&D outcomes, we'll work together with local production companies & institutions in several other European cities to create a network of chapters all across Europe.

Ethical representation

The project’s aim is to maximize educative impact while representing the highly sensitive topic of the Jewish experience in Europe (and during the Holocaust) in the most ethical way. This is why we created a multi-disciplinary team of experts, with whom we are working together closely from the pre-production to the post-production phases of the project. We are grateful for the collaboration with the University of Sussex’s Digital Holocaust Memory Project which brings in a vast experience in digital Holocaust representation.

Academic Research

Our team of experts are also planning to publish academic research based on the project. The planned research aspects are related to the following areas:

  • Media theory: The question of roleplay and perspective when representing such a sensitive topic interactively like the Holocaust

  • Educational Psychology: The use of AR in education – The difference between the impact and intervention effectiveness of traditional mediums like linear documentary vs. interactive immersive experiences

  • History: New findings on the history of the Ghetto of Budapest

* actual characters and story perspectives are subject to further user testing in order to find the most ethical ways of representation


Core Team

Directing, Narrative & Interaction Design: Barna Szász
Ethics & Digital Jewish representation expert: Dr. Victoria Grace Walden
Producer: Noémi Szakonyi & Máté Vincze
Technical Artist: Dane Christensen
Historian expert: Dr. Borbála Klacsmann
Education & impact measurement lead: Dr. Gábor Orosz
Lead Actor: Géza Röhrig

Currently in pre-production. Follow the project on IG: @if_these_streets_AR

 
 
 

Featured at

  • IDFA DocLab Forum, Amsterdam, 2022

  • Special Mention of the XR Jury, goEast XR Pitch, Wiesbaden, 2022

  • Geneva International Film Festival Digital Market, 2022

  • NewImages XR Development Market, Paris, 2022

  • East Doc Interactive, Prague, 2022

Lead actor

  • Géza Röhrig, poet and actor – star of the Academy Award-winning film Son of Saul

In Partnership with

  • The Digital Holocaust Memory Project, University of Sussex, UK

  • Institute for Transmedia Design, SLO

  • Department of Education and Psychology, ELTE, Budapest

  • Erzsébetvárosi Zsidó Történeti Tár, Budapest

  • The Municipality of Elizabethtown, Budapest