My first experience of a VR cinema at the Limina pop-up theate expereince in Bristol and it did not disappoint. I attended the 1 hour session, Through Time & Space, that featured short films from the 24 VR film shortlist at the Encounters Film Festival. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived but it was a very welcoming space with the ‘audience’ area comprising no more that 10 revolving stools. We were given an introduction to the Oculus Go headset and the onboarding process explained. The films were all then presented one after an another in preprogrammed sequence within the headset.
The VR films themselves all offered varying levels of immersive experience: from the wonderfully simple illustrative style in Banana Bread; the engaging story of the astronaut having a bad day in Aripi/ Wings; to the truly bonkers Your Spiritual Temple Sucks. I actually throughly enjoyed them all but Your Spirtual Temple Sucks certainly stood out for both the uniqueness of the story and the way it was directed in VR as the audience was continually required to look behind them.
Imagery from websearches (bristol 365.com, liminaimmersive.com, tripadvisor.com, 2019.encounters.film/films)
