Virtual Reality Film Fest Tours N. America

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 06 August 2015 23:23

Written by Renzo Adler

Lovr

It has been many years since virtual reality was in the public consciousness. If you went to arcades or amusement parks in the mid 1990’s you might recall agonizingly heavy headsets and clunky graphics like those found in Dactyl Nightmare. The possibility of virtual reality led to some excitement and speculation, but little pay-off. The promise of being able to journey to strange and amazing worlds with the help of a computer and a visor was something that got tucked away at the end of the 90s along with VHS and the Clinton administration.

Flash forward to 2014, the company Oculus VR, which had been founded in 2012 by Palmer Lucky following a succesful Kickstarter campaign, is bought out by Facebook to the tune of $2 billion. Since 2012, companies like Facebook, Sony, and Samsung have been exploring the possibility of a VR resurgence where it is now a major part of interactive entertainment rather than just a forgotten novelty, with a consumer version of the Oculus Rift due out Q1 2016, with competing devices to follow. With dev kits on the market for years now we have seen applications for everything from video gaming, to PTSD therapy and meditation. And now virtual reality is also taking a step into cinema.

Virtual reality agency Kaleidoscope announced the Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival Presented by Vrideo, a multi-city tour set to showcase the best in virtual reality filmmaking and artists working in this cutting edge field. From August 22 to October 14, 2015, Kaleidoscope will tour ten cities across North America.

Using headsets from Oculus and Samsung, viewers will experience new forms of interactive narratives and environments. You can go from walking inside the Van Gogh painting The Night Cafe, traverse the Korean DMZ, to analyzing the neural synapses that cause the feeling of love.

“We have seen the gaming industry embrace virtual reality, and now the film industry is on the verge of the same breakthrough,” said Kaleidoscope co-founder René Pinnell.  “After the unprecedented popularity of virtual reality components in this year’s major film festivals – including Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and Hot Docs – as well major film and television studio’s recent VR initiatives, including Jurassic World, Wild, Interstellar and Game of Thrones, we want the chance to highlight the incredible independent filmmakers who are pioneering this new film language.”

Films include:

• THE NEPAL QUAKE PROJECT (U.S., Dir: David Darg)
  Narrated by Susan Sarandon, THE NEPAL QUAKE PROJECT uses Virtual Reality technology to immerse viewers in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake. The film not only marks the first in natural disaster VR, but it represents the future of news and action.
  
  
• THE NIGHT CAFÉ  (U.S., Dir: Mac Cauley)
  THE NIGHT CAFÉ is an immersive VR environment that allows you to explore the world of Vincent van Gogh first hand. Take a moment to enjoy his iconic sunflowers in three dimensions or walk around the chair he painted in his bedroom to see it from another angle. Step into the vivid colors straight from his palette.
  
  
• BRIGHT SHADOWS (U.S., Dir: Michael Catalano)
  Inspired by the abstract visual music animators of the early to mid-1900's, Bright Shadows is an 11 minute computer generated animation of dynamic, colorful abstractions choreographed to instrumental music. It is comprised of seven distinct movements with unique emotional tones that are brought to life with high-quality lighting and shading techniques and rendered in stereoscopic 3D.
  
  
• BUTTS (U.S., Dir: Tyler Hurd)
  Widely credited as the first animated cartoon for virtual reality, BUTTS is a story about love, trust, and learning what it means to be truly free. Transport yourself into a brand new bright and colorful world of happiness and excitement, and make some friends along the way. BUTTS will make you laugh, cry, fill you with unimaginable bliss, and return you to that innocent place of childlike wonder you've long forgotten.
  
  
• CLOUDS OVER SIDRA (U.S., Dir: Chris Milk and Gabo Arora)
  CLOUDS OVER SIDRA follows a twelve year old in the Za’atari camp in Jordan – home to 84,000 Syrian refugees. It follows her to school, to her makeshift tent and even to the football pitch. The film was commissioned as part of the UN’s advocacy at the World Economic Forum in Davos to state and business leaders and offers a unique perspective into the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people.
  
  
• COLOSSE (Israel, UK, U.S., Producer: Joseph Chen)
  COLOSSE is a real-time virtual reality storytelling experience, with a stylized, character-focused visual language. While the viewer has no direct control over the action, the progression of the narrative is gaze-based. The viewer's gaze – things the viewer pays the most attention to – directs the experience around them, giving a subtle influence over events as they unfold. The story of the long lost Great Spirits known as the COLOSSE explores themes of fear, power and respect.

Much like the nickelodeons of old turning into the cinemas and movie studios of today, VR is growing from novelty, to entertainment revolution.

To learn more, go to: http://www.kvrff.com/

2015 Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival

Portland, OR  - Saturday, August 22
Seattle, WA  - Wednesday, August 26
Vancouver, BC  - Saturday, August 29
San Francisco, CA  - Tuesday, September 15
Los Angeles, CA  - Wednesday, September 23
Denver, CO  - Saturday, September 26
Montreal, QC  - Thursday, October 1
Toronto, ON  - Sunday, October 4
New York, NY  - Tuesday, October 6
Austin, TX  - Wednesday, October 14

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