ATOMU

10:00, 2020, FR/KE/USA/UK
D: Shariffa Ali, Yetude Dada

In this pioneering participatory movement piece, seven people gather around a sacred tree—the cyclical center of a Kenyan Kikuyu tribal myth—where if one walks around the tree seven times, a man may become a woman and a woman may become a man. Suddenly, out from the bushes jumps Wacici, a person who has come to find the most honest version of themselves. Together, you will ascend with Wacici on this journey.

AWARDS

Atomu premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

About the directors

Shariffa Ali is a graduate of the University of Cape Town’s select theatre division. Born in Nairobi, Ali is half-Kenyan, half-Ethiopian and after having spent the majority of her years in Swaziland and South Africa, Shariffa considers herself an afropolitan. Shariffa has served as an assistant director to Grammy, Emmy and Tony award winner Cynthia Nixon and is currently a freelance and very successful theatre director.

Yetude Dada is a photographer and product manager with an MBA from the University of Oxford. She is half-Zambian, half-Nigerian and spent her childhood in South Africa. She was a finalist in the Nokia Decisive Moment photography category at the D&AD awards and has showcased work at the She.Clix WOMEN exhibition in Johannesburg.

AWAVENA

30:00, 2018, USA/BR/AUS
D: Lynette Wallworth

For the Amazonian Yawanawa, medicine has the power to transport us in a vision to a world that lies within the world we know. At the request of the Yawanawa and Hushahu, their first woman shaman-artist, Wallworth uses technology like medicine to fulfil their dream: send a message out. Awavena is a collaboration between a community and an artist melding technology and transcendent experience to share a vision and tell the story of a people who ascended from the edge of extinction. The film aims not to provoke empathy for the Yawanawa, it is a gift from them to those who virtually visit their forest and experience a portal, opened to their world view.

AWARDS

Awavena premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival and won the International News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary in 2020.

About the director

Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist/filmmaker who has consistently worked with emerging media technologies. Besides festivals and galleries, her work has also appeared at the World Economic Forum. Her interactive installation Evolution of Fearlessness; fulldome feature Coral: Rekindling Venus, with accompanying augmented reality work; and VR narratives Collisions and Awavena were shown in many international film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Collisions also won an Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary in 2017.

BEAT

12:00, 2020, JP
D: Keisuke Itoh

Beat is a story elaborated from your “heart”. Viewers can experience the work with their hearts in their hands. The heart in the animation vibrates at the same pace at viewers' heartbeat. Viewers encounter a rusted robot, absolutely static. He doesn’t have a “heart” to move. Viewers can grant him a new heart by putting theirs on the robot. He then stands up and starts to move, expressing joy to live out all his strength. However, when he meets with new robots, he doesn’t know how to communicate properly. “Heart” becomes the key to move the story forward. The story aims to arouse consciousness of “Heart” via the growth of the robot.

AWARDS

Beat premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

About the director

Keisuke Itoh was born in 1986 in Japan and is a freelance VR & 3DCG artist. After working as a graphic designer for a manufacturer, switched to freelance work from 2012. He is in the pursuit of warmness and a human touch in his CG unlike cold, conventional CG.

DAS TOTALE TANZ THEATER 360

8:00, 2019, DE
D: Maya Puig

100 years ago, artistic research and experimentation on the topic of humans and machines was already being pioneered at the stage workshops of the historic Bauhaus. Inspired by Oskar Schlemmer's stage experiments and Gropius’ idea for the “Total Theatre”, an interdisciplinary team led by the Interactive Media Foundation created a virtual world that invites visitors to explore the relationship between man and machine. Wearing VR glasses, visitors immerse themselves in a huge virtual stage, experiencing a dance-like choreography over three levels performed by a “Tanzmaschine” that they activate themselves. As they do so, they are faced with the question of the extent to which they can truly influence the space and the machine. The interaction of human-made choreography, personal intervention and machine algorithms results in ever new forms of movement and dance in space.

AWARDS

Das Totale Tanz Theater 360 was shown at the 2019 Cannes XR and was named one of the best 35 VR installations of the year by the Forbes magazine.

About the director

Maya Puig was born in 1981 in West-Berlin, where is now based after having lived in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and London. She is a storyteller with a background in directing and scriptwriting and works as a Creative Producer at the Interactive Media Foundation in Berlin, where she is responsible for the development and creative execution of story-driven interactive projects.

HOMINIDAE

16:00, 2020, USA
D: Brian Andrews 

The “arachnid hominid” is an original species comprised of photo-composites built from human and veterinary X-ray films—they are intelligent creatures with human and spider physiology. Hominidae follows the life of one arachnid hominid as she struggles to raise her young in a hostile environment. This emotional and exquisitely crafted experience is set in a world of X-ray visibility and wild anatomical re-imagination, where creatures have evolved in surprising ways.

AWARDS

Hominidae was selected in many international film festivals, Cannes XR and Sundance Film Festival among them.

About the director

Brian Andrews is a storyteller and visual technologist who produces media for the visual effects, animation, and fine art markets. His works have been exhibited at Le Marché du Film Festival de Cannes, Hong Kong Exhibitions Centre, the Queens Museum, and the California Academy of Sciences among many others. Currently he serves as an assistant professor and chair of post-production at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts.

NIGHTSSS

7:00, 2019, PL
D: Weronika Lewandowska, Sandra Frydrysiak

VR Nightsss is an artistic animation with ASMR and interactive elements that immerses the viewer in the sensual experience of poetry, dance and nature. The script was based on the spoken word poem Nightsss, in which the sounds characteristic of the Polish language create onomatopoeic landscapes crossing language barriers. What will you hear and see in the Nightsss environment if you can play with space and the space plays with your imagination and memory?

AWARDS

VR Nightsss premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

About the directors

Weronika Lewandowska is the director, screenwriter, and executive producer of the VR experience Nightsss—a work based on her spoken word poem. She is a spoken word poet, performer, and researcher of new media and immersion experiences. She has a PhD in cultural studies. She runs workshops on spoken word poetry, literary performances, and VR/digital storytelling.

Sandra Frydrysiak is the director, screenwriter, and research supervisor of the VR experience Nightsss. She is an assistant professor at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw and has a PhD in cultural studies. She is a sociologist working in the areas of new media, dance, and gender studies.

OM DEVI: SHEROES REVOLUTION

23’, 2020, IT/IN
D: Claudio Casale

This VR is a journey through India today, through the eyes of three women who have all experienced the vindication of gender equality in different ways. Anjali, Shabnam and Devya Arya continue their everyday battles, combining the social idealism with the spirituality they grew up with, in a harmonious synthesis of activism and tradition. The spirit of Devi, the much-celebrated Indian deity symbolising female energy symbolically weaves her way into their tales, accompanying them on their path to emancipation and self-discovery and, like an invisible thread, embracing them in a country that is of immense size.

AWARDS

Om Devi: Sheroes Revolution premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

About the director

Claudio Casale was born in 1986 in Rome, Italy, and graduated in Business Administration before moving to Asia, where he lived in-between India and Southeast Asia and began shooting documentaries. Back in Rome, he gradually leaned toward directing and in 2017 he released Piccolo Mondo Cane, his first independent documentary. During that same year, he moved to New York to join a directing course at the New York Film Academy. In 2018, he released the short film My Tyson, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it received the MigrArti best documentary award, and went on to be nominated for the prestigious Nastri d’Argento Corto Doc. In late 2018, Claudio co-founded the production company Sibilla Film with Viola Brancatella.

PAPER BIRDS PART 1 & 2

19:00, 2020, AR
D: German Heller, Federico Carlini

Paper Birds is the story of a short sighted child with an exceptional talent for music. He must find his way through the world of darkness to bring back his sister, taken away by the shadows. He’ll use the depth of music to open portals to the invisible world. He’ll confront the shadows, and they’ll reveal their purpose. This journey uses the senses to evoque our inner darkness, and the mystery that lies within it. The unknown that we’re often afraid to see. A story about inspiration, intuition, emotion and how these qualities are invoked by the music.

AWARDS

Paper Birds Part 1 & 2 premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

About the director

Federico Carlini is a director based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With solid results in the visual, his style ranges from the passionate and emotional, to the delirious and abstract having traversed and delved into many of the areas of this incredible and particular world. He has been involved in several worldwide awarded works that have always contributed from the art direction and visual development. He also performs as art director, VFX & CG supervisor, and music composer. Currently and for some years he has been part of the stable team as art director in 3DAR.com, studio based in Buenos Aires.

SAMSARA EP. 1

21’, 2021, TW
D: Hsin-chien Huang

In the near future, the Earth’s environment has been completely destroyed by the human race. We have to abandon it and find a new home in space. After a hundred years of space travel, we have re-engineered our DNA and artificially evolved into a new form. We jump through the space singularity and find a new planet to settle down. Many years go by and we suddenly realize that we didn’t reach a new world but returned to Earth in another time as a different life form, and our ancestors are now predators to us. Several attempts are made to leave Earth, which leads back to it. Then, we realize that time is an illusion; our past, present, and future are fused together.

AWARDS

Samsara Ep. 1 has been named as winner of the virtual cinema competitions in both Cannes XR and SXSW.

About the director

Hsin-Chien Huang is a new media creator with backgrounds in art, design, engineering and digital entertainment. His career endeavor explores cutting edge technologies in art, literature, design and stage performing.