The Virtual Reality Section of the 11th BJIFF, themed “Between Spaces”, has selected the world's major VR and Mixed Reality (MR) works in the past few years to discuss about how VR has presented and interpreted spaces. The VR section consists of three parts that are named after a single Chinese character each, translated into Encircled - Enchanted - Encounter in English respectively, aiming to return Chinese characters to forms, structures and pictographic symbols.
The three parts, Encircled - Enchanted -Encounter, contain 14 works, where the shift from closed loops to openness, from a wait-and-see attitude to an active approach, and from the “small virtual world” to “reality” is continuously taking place. The world is broadened with vision, and the Wonder Gate to multiple spaces is opening:
01
Encircled
Encircled refers to building virtual boundaries in reality. A new reality composed by the screen is watched, listened and felt by people experiencing it. This part, involving 360-degree panoramic videos and virtual spaces, observes the artistic texture via the VR medium starting with literature, films and architecture.
Replacements
Japan, Germany and Indonesia/2020/12 min/No dialogue
Highlight: An animated film about urban changes from the perspective of a family, observing the tremendous changes from villages to cities in 40 years.
Trailer of Replacements
Synopsis: A Javanese family in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, changes with the times. They have witnessed the urban, environmental, political and cultural changes of Jakarta from 1980 to 2020. The film aims to interpret and review the modern history of Jakarta from the perspective of an ordinary family.
Blind Vaysha
Canada/2016/10 min/English
Highlight: 180-degree animation, presenting unconventional 3D composite images in a 3D form.
Trailer of Blind Vaysha
Synopsis: Different from other girls, Vaysha is unable to live in the present as her left eye can only see the past while her right eye can only see the future. Should she puncture one eye so as to live in the reality of one eye? Or is she destined to perceive the world from a confusing perspective?
Odyssey 1.4.9
France/2019/8 min/No dialogue
Highlight: An amazing VR journey, paying a tribute to the secrets behind Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.
Trailer of Odyssey 1.4.9
Synopsis: In 1965, Kubrick directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. He turned the film into a mysterious journey of treasure hunting, and revealed the scalability and complexity of the theme “Being a human”. Odyssey 1.4.9 attempts to return to the core of a film, which clarifies the landmark meaning of Kubrick’s film through a fully immersive look and feel and a VR experience that goes beyond space travel.
Recoding Entropia
France/2020/8 min/No dialogue
Highlight: Experiencing pure abstraction in the virtual world.
A still of Recoding Entropia
Synopsis: A metal tetrahedron floats in the milky abyss. Everything is very calm -- until this geometric form is suddenly deconstructed and atomized into billions of fragments. Through purely abstract forms and movements, Recoding Entropia questions the audience's position in the universe and provides an immersive journey to explore the mysteries of extinction and rebirth.
Terminus
Australia/2019/30 min (5 parts)/No dialogue
Highlight: A mysterious alien architecture universe is full of human clones and mysterious symbols.
Trailer of Terminus
Synopsis: Terminus presents an exploration voluntarily chosen by experiencers, who venture into the mysterious universe and enter the alien architecture full of clones and mysterious symbols. As time and space fall, the journey goes through five different countries, and everything ahead tells us: Reality is not fixed, but scalable and multi-dimensional.
Hush
Denmark/2020/10 min/No dialogue
Highlight: A voice-led VR experience, in which experiencers are summoned to enter the Nordic marine folklore.
A still of Hush
Synopsis: The work comes from the Nordic mermaid mythology -- The mermaid seduces sailors, wishing to suck their souls into the sea. Experiencers stand by the sea, listening to the call from the sea, and the surrounding world gradually dissipates...When they are submerged into the fascinating underwater world, the boundaries between man and nature, reality and imagination have disappeared.
02
Enchanted
Enchanted refers to breaking the borders of reality and opening the door across the reality. Through symmetry, mirroring, contrast and dislocation, the audience will transit from trance to identity between the virtual world and reality, between ancient times and the present, and between new things and old ones. This part, involving diverse interactive works, provides a VR-based cultural atmosphere through displacement, speech, touch and other ways.
The Hangman at Home
Denmark, France and Canada/2020/25 min/English
Highlight: An interactive animation, exploring the awkward intimacy between humans. A winner of the Best VR Immersive Work at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival.
A still of The Hangman at Home
Synopsis: The Hangman at Home is an interactive animation experience, exploring the awkward intimacy between humans. Five intertwined stories are told: Each scene presents a person, or the existence of a person at some delicate moments. At these moments, how similar we are.
Kusunda
Germany and Nepal/2020/23 min/Kusunda and English
Highlight: Real shooting + animation and voice interaction, participating in the retention of a dying language.
Trailer of Kusunda
Synopsis: Kusunda is an interactive experience of virtual reality. The film explores the decline of a language and how to reawaken it. Lil Bahadur is a Kusunda monk who gradually forgets his mother language, but his granddaughter Hima is determined to revive the language.
Gravity
Brazil and Peru/2020/15 min/English
Highlight: An interactive animation, presenting a life fable guided by different outlooks on life.
Trailer of Gravity
Synopsis: Gravity is a wild journey through the chaotic world. During the experience, follow the last moments of the two brothers to freely fall for 15 minutes. There is no ground under your feet, only an exciting journey in a surreal universe. This is a fable, but also an interactive experience.
Marco & Polo Go Round
Belgium and Canada/2021/12 min/English
Highlight: Entering the oil painting world of the David Hockney style in a way that is only visible in VR.
Trailer of Marco & Polo Go Round
Synopsis: A romantic comedy with surrealism. On the morning of his birthday, Marco gets up and finds that everything in the kitchen is tied up with tape and twine. A storm is about to come. With the quarrel between the partners, the world becomes upside down.
The Dawn of Art
France/2020/10 min/English
Highlight: Entering the Cave Chauvet 30,000 years ago in France, where VR meets the oldest immersive
A still of The Dawn of Art
Synopsis: The Dawn of Art, in combination with an immersive movie and a virtual visit to the Cave Chauvet, invites experiencers to search for prehistoric ancestors, and join the first group of humans venturing deep into the underground world to find their traces left on the cave. The experiencers, going beyond time and space, are immersed in the artistic creation of the cave with artists tens of thousands of years ago.
03
Encounter
Encounter refers to the thinking that spills over from the virtual world. Through sincere questioning and conversations, a sentimental relationship across categories, times and media is established. This part, involving Mixed Reality works of pioneering experimental significance, achieves “redirected walking” in the field of reinterpreting the classics of art history, walking from the black box to a sunny day in the early autumn of Beijing.
Live-VR Corridor
USA/2017/5 min/English
Highlight: A film about VR installations, thinking about VR in the contemporary art history of video installations.
Trailer of Live-VR Corridor
Synopsis: The VR art has multiple histories, and continues the perceptible and embodied traditions in films, video art, and installation art. Based on historical reviews, Live-VR Corridor has copied Bruce Nauman's Live-Taped Video Corridor in 1970, one of the earliest video installation art works. VR provides a unique visual form, and reactivates the pleasure of seeing and being seen.
Hypnosis: Reveries
China/2021/20 min/No dialogue
Highlight: Experiencing redirected walking, and continuously moving forward and discovering in a space of 50 square meters.
Trailer of Hypnosis: Reveries
Synopsis: Every year, countless young people come to the big city with dreams, which are their spiritual sustenance and hope to change their destiny. While looking up at this city, they are also denied and shaken by it. Hypnosis: Reveries is a product of the collision between dreams and reality. Experiencers will enter a spiritual maze, revisit the depths of memory, and look back at the important moments that have changed them.
The Walking Central Axis · Overlooking in Parallel Time and Space
China/2021/60 min/Chinese
Highlight: A sound landscape work, and a walking experience at the Yongdingmen Park.
Trailer of The Walking Central Axis
Synopsis: An immersive sound theater of city roaming. Participants put on headphones, set off from the Yongdingmen Gate Tower, and walk through the central axis corridor, embarking on an immersive roam of architecture and culture around the southern central axis. Through the integration of elements such as sound guidance, visual experience, role-playing, interactive participation, oral history, etc., the participants are invited to complete an immersive experience from visual, auditory, tactile, and multi-sensory dimensions.
