This weekend I attended the virtual Tribeca Film Festival and watched Cinema 360 in an Oculus Go headset. This part of the festival featured 15 films that have been split into four categories – Pure Imagination, Dreams to Remember, Kinfolk & Seventeen Plus.
Pure Imagination consisted of the films Upstander, Tale of the Tibetan Nomad, Attack on Daddy & Lutlaw. I found Upstander very powerful and felt the story succeeded in conveying its anti-bullying message. When the green ruck sack is bullied by the blue and white rucksacks it is clear that by intervening the red ruck sack has become an upstander. The camera placements in the CGI scenes were particularly effective and the last scene, where the lights have been turned up to reflect positivity, places you directly in front of the main character and you cannot help but watch as the ball flies toward the net with a smile on your face. The Tale of the Tibetan Nomad was less successful and I felt the story was a bit weak – I’m not sure if this needed to be shot in 360 - however the kaleidoscope credit sequences worked well. Attack on Daddy was a weird story of killer rabbits in a dolls house fighting a father and daughter. Very surreal but clever placement of the camera experimenting with real scale and dolls house scale. Lutlaw. The animated story told is quite shocking: in some communities children in the Philippines need to swim to school. There is a hero in the story who builds a yellow boat for herself (and other children) to travel safely to school.
The films in the Dreams to Remember program are First Step, Rain Fruits, Dear Lizzy and Forgotten Kiss. First Step is the story of the Apollo missions to the moon. Stunning imagery but possibly too many shots as I felt I needed more time to look around. Rain Fruits is a story of an engineer from Myanmar who travels to Korea for work but it does not live up to his dreams. He reminisces about the rain in Myanmar and the fruit gels on the trees. Filmed using 3D scanning and direct VR creation the result is an interesting juxtaposition of creation. Dear Lizzy features the narration of an animated letter from a long-lost friend while Lizzy takes a walk along a road with many psychedelic things to see. Forgotten Kiss is based on the story of a fairy kissing a young prince and his lifetime quest to remember that forgotten kiss. Pantomimic and interesting setting of real actors within the CGI set.
The Kinfolk section includes Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR, The Inhabited House & Home. Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR is an immersive memoir of an American Ethiopian mixed identity woman trying to understand her race. The whole film is shot in a gentle walkthrough with accompanying soundtrack and narrative. The Inhabited House is a wonderfully simple concept that works well. The uninhabited house has been recreated in 360 and the filmed memories of the habitants have been overlaid in the positions within the house. Brings the house to life in a relatable and poignant way. Home brought a tear to my eye. A thoughtful portrayal of a family gathering from putting the participant in the shoes of the oldest member of the family. The concerned son, the numerous family members more engaged with their phones, the younger children that didn’t want to be there and the painful silence when they left. Moving.
Seventeen Plus included the films A Safe Guide to Dying, Black Bag, The Pantheon of Queer Mythology & Saturnism. A Safe Guide to Dying tells the story of a grandad trying out and researching various methods of suicide. The 360 montage of the research, including the conclusion of Helium as the best method, was presented in a circular display that required the users to continually turn to follow the story. The Pantheon of Queer Mythology: “is a window into the world of a collective of Deities that present a way to question, empathize, celebrate, repent, resist, consume, abstract, identify, regenerate, and love in complex times”. It is a guided tour through queerness. Equally as complex, Black Bag tells the story of a bank heist through dreams then reality with a visually interesting hand painted artistic style. Saturnism was a dark and gloomy CGI version of one of the darkest paintings in the history of art: Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. The myth states that Saturn devours his children to protect himself from them but he also turns on the participant…
