The Tribeca Film Festival has set the lineup for the 2018 Tribeca Immersive program which showcases works by artists who are pushing boundaries, using technology to tell stories and create new experiences. The Virtual Arcade lineup, presented by AT&T, includes 21 world premiere VR/AR exhibits as well as five Storyscapes experiences in competition. The program takes place at the Tribeca Festival Hub from April 20-28. A new addition to Tribeca Immersive is Tribeca Cinema360, a VR theater featuring four curated screening programs of 360° mobile content, running April 21-28. The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival takes place April 18-29, 2018.
This year’s offerings include 33 virtual reality (VR) innovative exhibitions and experiences from top creators such as Jeremy Bailenson, Chris Milk, Eliza McNitt, Eugene YK Chung, Gabo Arora, and Saschka Unseld, and emerging artists Asad J. Malik, Gabriela Arp, and Lucas Rizzotto. Other acclaimed creators include: Angel Manuel Soto, Lindsay Branham, and Navid Khonsari. Established directors, actors, and musicians with projects this year include: directors Terrence Malick (Together), Laurie Anderson (Chalkroom); actors Rosario Dawson (BattleScar), Lupita Nyong’o (My Africa), Alicia Vikander (Arden’s Wake: Tide’s Fall); and GRAMMY® award winning band OK Go (Untitled OK Go & WITHIN Project).
Several Immersive projects featured in the program tackle timely cultural issues, including racism (1,000 Cut Journey), climate change (This is Climate Change), immigration and xenophobia (Terminal 3), nuclear war (The Day The World Changed) and HIV/AIDS (Queerskins: a love story). In addition, the lineup includes programming that allows visitors to become active participants in astonishing experiences, such as swimming with sharks (Into the Now), caring for a baby elephant (My Africa), being caught in the bombing raid of a town square (Hero), and participating in a groundbreaking collaboration of AR and Immersive Theater from creators Graham Sack, Sensorium Works and NY Theater Workshop (objects in mirror AR closer than they appear).
Tribeca Cinema360 spotlights four immersive screening programs: VR for Good Creators Lab, This is Climate Change, horror themed It’s Right Behind You, and the breathtaking experimental visions of Horizons.
“We are at a cultural crossroads. In times of crisis and contemplation, artists have always found a way to inspire and challenge,” said Loren Hammonds, programmer, film and immersive. “The creators that we’ve invited to take part in this year’s Tribeca Immersive are no different. They are using technology and storytelling to tackle subjects such as the dangers of nuclear weapons, racial and religious discrimination, and the real face of climate change. VR is a medium of transportation, and these pieces will do just that for our audience.”
“Each year, we’re seeing creators push boundaries and explore new ways to tell stories through VR. As the technology improves, so does the storytelling, and with that we are able to use VR to tackle new issues, experiences and narratives and invite new audiences to experience these projects,” said Ingrid Kopp, co-curator of Tribeca Immersive.
VIRTUAL ARCADE
20 projects from five countries, with 17 world premieres, make up this dynamic program.
#WarGames VR (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Sam Barlow, Eko
Key Collaborators: MGM, m ss ng p eces
Kelly, an ex-military brat-turned-hacker activist, teams up with international hackers in an attempt to bring about peace. But, as events escalate, it begins to appear that they may have done more harm than good. #WarGames puts viewers in the middle of the convergence of hacktivism, modern-day espionage, and military intrigue.
1000 Cut Journey (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Courtney Cogburn, Elise Ogle, Jeremy Bailenson, Tobin Asher, Teff Nichols
Key Collaborators: Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Cogburn Research Group
In this immersive virtual-reality experience, the viewer becomes Michael Sterling, a black man, encountering racism as a young child, adolescent, and young adult. 1,000 Cut Journey highlights the social realities of racism, for understanding racism is the essential first step in promoting effective, collective social action and achieving racial justice.
Arden’s Wake: Tide’s Fall (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Eugene YK Chung, Jimmy Maidens
Key Collaborators: Devon Penney, Annmarie Koenig, Bruna Berford, Christina Tasooji, Adrian Ochoa, Jessica Douglas, Terry Kaleas, Kinga Vasicsek
Tide’s Fall continues the journey of Meena, a young woman living in a post-apocalyptic world and searching for her father in the depths of the ocean after his unexpected disappearance. Featuring the voice of Academy Award-winner Alicia Vikander, this expansion of Penrose Studios’ award winning Arden’s Wake embraces the art of long-form storytelling in virtual reality.
Cast: Alicia Vikander (narrator)
BattleScar (New York Premiere) – USA, France
Project Creator: Nico Casavecchia, Martin Allais
Key Collaborators: Arnaud Colinart, Andrew Geller, Raphael Penasa, René Pinnell
After Lupe, a Puerto Rican runaway, meets Debbie in the cell of a juvenile detention center, she is introduced to the punk scene of the Lower East Side and the secret world of Alphabet City. BattleScar is a coming of age drama set in 1978 New York that explores identity and empowerment through stunning animation and immersive environments.
Cast: Rosario Dawson (narrator)
Campfire Creepers: Midnight March (World Premiere) – France, USA
Project Creator: Alexandre Aja
Key Collaborators: Casey Cooper Johnson, Martin Andersen
When the kids at Camp Coyote are forced on a brutal midnight march by their sadistic counselors, one boy reaches his breaking point. He turns the tables on the bullies, revealing a surprising secret about himself in the process. Master of horror Alexandre Aja invites viewers on a thrilling ride that will leave them gasping.
Cast: Archie Lewis, Chloe Hawthorne, Kai Czuplak, Lara Karbritz, Lola Martin
Chalkroom (New York Premiere) – Taiwan R.O.C., USA
Project Creator: Laurie Anderson, Hsin-Chien Huang
Chalkroom is a virtual reality work by celebrated artist Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang in which the reader—the viewer—flies through an enormous structure made of words, drawings, and stories. Inside the experience, the reader is free to roam and fly, while words sail through the air like emails, fall into dust, and form and reform.
Coral Compass: Fighting Climate Change in Palau (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Tobin Asher, Elise Ogle, Jeremy Bailenson
Key Collaborators: Rob Dunbar, Bob Richmond
Palau, like many other small countries, is powerless to curb global carbon dioxide emissions. Nevertheless, the tiny island nation is adapting to climate change: In its clear, warm waters exist resilient coral reefs safeguarded by a strong-willed people fighting to keep them alive.
The Day the World Changed (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Gabo Arora, Saschka Unseld
Key Collaborators: Nathan Brown, Tom Lofthouse, Jennifer Tiexiera, Nate Robinson, Igal Nassima
This virtual-reality experience situates participants in the ruins of Hiroshima after the bomb, allowing them to witness testimony from survivors and survey the nuclear arms race through immersive, interactive data visualization. The Day the World Changed, from acclaimed creators Gabo Arora & Sachka Unseld, brings the harrowing impressions of the victims of atomic bombings and nuclear tests to viewers through innovative use of 3-D scanning and photogrammetry.
Dinner Party (New York Premiere) – Puerto Rico, USA
Project Creator: Angel Manuel Soto, Charlotte Stoudt, Laura Wexler
Key Collaborators: Rachel Skidmore, Bryn Mooser, Erik Donley
Dinner Party tells the incredible story of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who made the first report of a UFO abduction in America in 1961. Having sought hypnosis to recover memories of their inexplicable experience, the Hills decide to listen to the recording of their session during a dinner party—and what they hear could change their lives forever.
Cast: Malcolm Barrett, Sarah Sokolovic
Firebird: The Unfinished (World Premiere) – France
Project Creator: Balthazar Auxietre
Key Collaborators: Hadrien Lanvin
The curator of a museum dedicated to the famous sculptor Auguste is making a last inspection the night before the grand opening when a storm breaks out. Suddenly, the statues populating the grounds are not quite as still as one might expect—but it’s not clear whether the storm outside is playing mind games, or whether, perhaps, the ghost of Auguste has appeared to ask for help finishing his masterpiece.
Cast: Tarek Aitmeddour, Raphaelle Boitel, Augustin Jacob, Pauline Journe, Myriam Kerkour, David Negroni
Fire Escape (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Vassiliki Khonsari, Navid Khonsari, Andres Perez-Duarte, Sam Butin
Key Collaborators: Lulu LaMer, Maria Essig, iNK Stories
This innovative, interactive thriller invites the participant to peer into the private lives of eight diverse New Yorkers from the vantage of a fire escape, where suspicion and deception unfold in real time. Set against the shadowy backdrop of gentrification in contemporary Brooklyn, Fire Escape depicts a contingent of disenfranchised tenants who soon become entangled in a string of dark mysteries and murder.
Cast: ASMR Darling, Ethan Rains, Edward Jackson, Michelle Lukes, Olivia Preciado, Tanya Henderson, Giselle Gilbert
The Hidden (World Premiere) – India, USA
Project Creator: Lindsay Branham
Key Collaborators: International Justice Mission, Oculus VR for Good
There are currently more people living in slavery than at any other time in human history. One such family has been enslaved in a rock quarry in southern India for 10 years—over a paltry debt of $70 USD. Indian government representatives, supported by the human rights group International Justice Mission, plot a daring raid to free the family.
Also playing as a part of Cinema360: VR For Good Creators Lab
Into the Now (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Michael Muller
Key Collaborators: Michael Smith, Morne Hardenberg
Director and legendary shark photographer Michael Muller’s lifelong fear of sharks eventually led him to discover the tranquility and peace of mind that is possible underwater, engaged with these curious and intimidating creatures. This stunning documentary, a revolutionary, stereoscopic virtual-reality experience, explores marine life and ocean conservation via Muller’s own internal journey.
My Africa (World Premiere) – USA, UK
Project Creator: Conservation International, Passion Planet, Vision3
In Northern Kenya, the futures of wildlife and people are intertwined. Stand in the midst of a thundering wildebeest migration, witness a lioness snatch her prey—and meet a community dedicated to saving Africa’s wildlife in My Africa. The mixed-reality, companion experience puts paticipants in the shoes of a Reteti Elephant Sanctuary keeper caring for the newest arrival, a baby elephant named Dudu.
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o (narrator), Naltwasha Leripe
SPHERES: Pale Blue Dot (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Eliza McNitt
Key Collaborators: Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, Jess Engel, Arnaud Colinart, Dylan Golden
In this cosmic journey from the edges of the universe to our “pale blue dot,” the viewer uncovers echoes of the Big Bang; gazes back in time; traces the history of sound across the cosmos, uncovering the strangest song of all; and traverses the universe, ultimately finding a path home.
Star Child (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Paul Bettner
Key Collaborators: Mia Goodwin
This cinematic platforming adventure follows the journey of Spectra and her companion on an important mission to an alien planet. After they are stranded, they uncover a hostile, overwhelming force that threatens to destroy everything. Inspired by countless science fiction adventure classics—games, books, and movies alike—Star Child is, at its heart, both a mystery and a journey of self-discovery.
Untitled OK Go & WITHIN Project (World Premiere) – USA, UK
Project Creator: Chris Milk, Damian Kulash
Key Collaborators: WITHIN, OK Go, Oculus
Innovative creators Chris Milk and OK Go’s Damian Kulash invite pairs of participants into a wondrous environment where they can experience the joy of creating music through collaboration. In this virtual world, replete with magical music-making contraptions, friendly animals, robots, and audience members work together to create an original song.
Vacation Simulator (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Owlchemy Labs
Key Collaborators:
The follow-up to the wildly popular virtual-reality game Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator returns participants to the world of Owlchemy Labs, where they can visit Vacation Island and experience “recreation,” optimal “relaxation,” and classic human pastimes like “sunburn.” Vacation Island offers all this and more, helping visitors rediscover the lost art of “time off.”
Vestige (World Premiere) – UK, USA, France
Project Creator: Aaron Bradbury
Key Collaborators: Paul Mowbray, Antoine Cayrol, Jill Klekas Basmajian
This creative nonfiction experience uses multi-narrative and volumetric capture to journey through the mind of Lisa as she remembers her lost love, Erik. Fragments of memories of their life together appear inside a void and, over time, become entangled with a haunting vision, culminating in the shocking moment of Erik’s death.
Cast: Lisa Elin
Where Thoughts Go : Prologue (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Lucas Rizzotto
Key Collaborators: Tarik Merzouk, Steven Hodgson
An intimate social virtual-reality experience, Where Thoughts Go is set in a world where all human thoughts exist as sleeping creatures, each holding a voice message left by a previous visitor. As they awake, they reveal the dreams, experiences and fears of other people—and give the participant the opportunity to leave their own for others to find.
STORYSCAPES
The competition includes four world premieres and one New York premiere. One Storyscapes nominee will be selected by a jury to receive the Storyscapes Award, presented by AT&T, which recognizes groundbreaking approaches in storytelling and technology. The five projects come from Canada, Pakistan and USA.
Biidaaban: First Light (World Premiere) – Canada
Project Creator: Lisa Jackson, Mathew Borrett, Jam3 and the National Film Board of Canada
Key Collaborators: Rob McLaughlin, Dana Dansereau
The town square has flooded, buildings and subways have merged with local flora, and indigenous languages and knowledge are thriving in a radically different future Toronto. Here, in the future, people have found a connection to the past. As a work of indigenous futurism, Biidaaban explores how the languages of native peoples can provide a framework for understanding our place in the world and open up a space for new imaginings of the future.
Hero (New York Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Navid Khonsari, Vassiliki Khonsari, Brooks Brown
Key Collaborators: Mark Harwood, Sinclair Fleming, Andres Perez-Duarte, Sam Butin, iNK Stories, Starbreeze Studios
This powerfully immersive, large-scale, multi-sensory installation explores humanity in our modern era of civilian warfare. When everyday life is disrupted by a barrel bomb falling from the sky, provoking a profound crisis in this vérité virtual-reality experience, only connection among humans can inspire hope, and participants must embark on a visceral hero’s journey.
Cast: Masoume Khonsari, Perla Daoud, Samer Sakka, Sam Sako, Said Faraj, Sue Shaheen
objects in mirror AR closer than they appear (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Graham Sack, Geoff Sobelle, John Fitzgerald, Matthew Niederhauser
Key Collaborators: Sarah Hughes, Steven Dufala, Steve Cuiffo, Jecca Barry, The Molecule, New York Theatre Workshop, SilVR
Based on the critically acclaimed theatrical performance The Object Lesson, objects in mirror AR closer than they appear fuses augmented reality technology with an immersive theater installation, inviting audiences to reflect on the relationship between new media and archaic objects; 21st-century technology and 19th-century magic; and memory and optical illusion. The piece creates a philosophical playground to explore the shifting relationship between images, memories, and things.
Cast: Geoff Sobelle
Queerskins: a love story (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Illya Szilak, Cyril Tsiboulski
In Missouri in the early ’90s, a diary and a box of belongings offers a devoutly Catholic mother—and participants of this haptic virtual-reality experience—a chance to know Sebastian, the estranged son she has lost to AIDS. Sitting in the back seat of a car, behind Sebastian’s parents, you take an emotionally charged journey down a country road, a memory lane populated with scrapbook artifacts that present an archive of Sebastian’s life.
Cast: Hadley Boyd, Drew Moore, Michael DeBartolo
Terminal 3 (World Premiere) – USA, Pakistan
Project Creator: Asad J. Malik
Key Collaborators: Kaleidoscope VR, Anita Gou, RYOT, Philipp Schaeffer, Viva Wittman, Jack Daniel Gerrard, Musa Ghaznavi
Terminal 3 is an interactive, augmented-reality documentary that explores contemporary Muslim identities in the U.S. through the lens of an airport interrogation. As viewers put on the Hololens, they step into the uncanny to directly interrogate, and determine the fate of, the hologram passenger before them. These interrogations become strikingly personal encounters that only end when the participant decides if the hologram should be let into the country or not—but there is a twist.
Cast: Aisha Yousaf, Ahmad Cory Jubran, Fereydoun Vakhshoury, Ani Zonneveld, Helya Salarvand
TRIBECA CINEMA360
The Cinema360 includes four programs that play twice daily, including:
Horizons
02:09 (World Premiere) – Sweden, China
Project Creator: Svante Fjaestad
In three minutes, the world will end. The rich have already left Earth for the New Colonies; those who couldn’t afford private shuttles into orbit remain stranded, like the now-worthless banknotes on the streets. A couple wait together on a rooftop, contemplating their fate, while, in front of them, the last human refugees leave the planet before it is too late.
Cast: Chen Dong Hong, Xie Hong
Together (New York Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Terrence Malick, The Factory at Facebook, Movement Art Is
Together fuses storytelling, dance and technology, placing the viewer in the center of a stirring, emotional narrative that explores the power of human connection. Working with Movement Art Is co-founders Jon Boogz and Lil Buck, Palme d’Or winning director Terrence Malick has crafted an immersive experience about breaking down barriers that is brilliantly brought to life through choreography.
It’s Right Behind You
Campfire Creepers: The Skull of Sam (North American Premiere) – Spain, USA
Project Creator: Alexandre Aja
Key Collaborators: Casey Cooper Johnson, Martin Andersen
French horror auteur Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, High Tension) directs this creepy tale of a couple who encounters a vicious stranger in the woods, who has plans to add them to his rather unique collection. But by injecting humor into this horrific scenario, the experience invites audiences to laugh between the screams.
Cast: Robert Englund
The Caretaker (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Jacob Wasserman, Nicolas Pesce, Adam Donald
Key Collaborators: Hidden Content, RealMotion VFX
After their car breaks down on the side of the road on a cold winter night, a couple checks into a strange hotel while they wait for a mechanic to arrive. When the woman’s boyfriend suddenly goes missing—the latest in a series of unsettling occurrences within the hotel—she begins to suspect that something more sinister is at work.
An Obituary (boogo) (US Premiere) – South Korea
Project Creator: Jean Yoon
Key Collaborators: Kuk- seok Yang, Jin-hee Kim
A young man travels alone deep into the countryside to pay his respects after hearing of a friend’s untimely death. Upon his arrival, he finds himself to be the sole mourner at the funeral. Alone in the country, save for the elderly mother of his deceased friend, he begins to wonder why they seem to be the only two people left in the village.
Cast: Tae-kyung Oh, Yong-nyeo Lee.
This is Climate Change
This is Climate Change (World Premiere) – Åland Islands, Brazil, Greenland, Somalia, USA
Project Creator: Eric Strauss, Danfung Dennis
Key Collaborators: Diana El-Osta (Producer), Catherine Yrisarri (Producer), Jeff Skoll (Executive Producer), Elise Pearlstein (Executive Producer), Kathy Davidov (Executive Producer), Casey Brown (Executive Producer)
In this expansive new four-part virtual reality docu-series from Participant Media and Condition One, journey to the far corners of the earth to discover the people and places being hit hardest by climate change. This Is Climate Change offers an immersive look into our new reality of catastrophic weather events that are displacing communities and transforming landscapes with alarming speed.
VR For Good Creators Lab
Meeting a Monster (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Gabriela Arp
Key Collaborators: Oculus VR for Good, Life After Hate
Through audio recordings and re-enactments, former white supremacist Angela King relives the memories of, and motivations behind, the eight years she spent inside the white power movement—and the path she took to get out. While the monsters of Angela’s past define the years she spent mired in hate, she finds redemption only after acknowledging the ultimate monster: herself.
Cast: Belle Emilie Gold, Jerry Edwards, Diana Mitchell, Skye Waller, Aidan Shields, Toia Johnson
She Flies by Her Own Wings (World Premiere) – USA
Project Creator: Jesse (Jesus) Ayala
Key Collaborators: Oculus VR for Good, Pride Foundation, Fovrth Studios, Flight School
She Flies by Her Own Wings depicts the inspiring story of Shannon Scott, who chose to stand up when her community, the U.S. armed services’ proud transgender service members and veterans, was under attack by President Donald Trump. Having enlisted before she could vote, Shannon has dedicated her entire adult life to defending and safeguarding American citizens at home and abroad.
Cast: Shannon Scott
The Hidden (World Premiere) – India, USA
Project Creator: Lindsay Branham
Key Collaborators: International Justice Mission, Oculus VR for Good
There are currently more people living in slavery than at any other time in human history. One such family has been enslaved in a rock quarry in southern India for 10 years—over a paltry debt of $70 USD. Indian government representatives, supported by the human rights group International Justice Mission, plot a daring raid to free the family.
