Countering Distorted Pasts: Interactive Documentary as Public Service in Far-Right History Wars

Abstract

State-linked interactive documentary can strengthen public historical judgment during far-right “history wars” that circulate mythic pasts through platform media and contest scholarly authority. This article analyzes four National Film Board of Canada (NFBC) digital works—Do Not Track (2015), Circa 1948 (2014), Bear 71 (2012), and Supreme Law (2019)—as public-service infrastructures for evidence, memory, and temporal orientation. The analysis shows how interface sequencing, exploratory navigation, and plural address train repeatable practices: tracing provenance, assembling chronology, weighing perspectives, and recognizing the institutional conditions that shape archives. Methodologically, the study combines close interface analysis with reception traces from press coverage, curator notes, and educational packaging. The four cases demonstrate a shared design logic: public media can organize slow forms of historical attention that platform economies discourage. The article closes with commissioning guidelines for digital public history that support democratic discourse under conditions of polarization: transparent sourcing, plural testimony, participatory authorship, accessibility planning, and maintenance strategies that keep public resources available across technological change.