One world: VR Exhibition
The virtual reality projects can be seen as part of the festival “One World 2022 Prague”. One ticket will allow you to try two to three projects of your choice during one hour.
Goliath: Playing with Reality / Barry Gene Murphy, May Abdalla / UK, France / 25 min. / in English – Everything you see is part of the game. Everything you feel is real, says Tilda Swinton, who lent her voice to the VR project. Right at the beginning, the viewers are asked to say their name into the microphone. They will hear it later in the experience as part of the story. There are several similar interactive moments in the project, which serve to uncover the problem of the protagonist Goliath, a man who has become addicted to online gaming and developed schizophrenia. Film and game passages intertwine in pixel art stylisation. Part of the experience is a “paranoid” variation on the arcade game Street Fighter, in which the player flees from non-existent enemies. Will Goliath be able to use these games in order to find a way out of his illusions into the real world?
Strands of Mind / Adrian Meyer / Germany / 12 min. / no dialogues – It’s night and only a few dense trees can be distinguished in the surrounding darkness. The crowns join to form a vault of intertwining branches. In the centre is a distinctive tree stump. One more step, and then it comes. Falling, into another world, into the depths of the matrix of the human mind and soul. Lights, flashes, strands of thought, nebulae, water vortices and other abstract images begin to emerge all around, blending into a spectacular psychedelic ride. Director Adrian Meyer has created a magical experimental VR film with intricate digital effects that takes the viewer in alternating tides along the banks of a mysterious mind.
Replacements / Jonathan Hagard / Japan, Indonesia, Germany / 12 min. / no dialogues – Jakarta, 1980. A small house with a veranda on a deserted street, only the occasional passer-by, the wind blows. The neighbourhood is quiet, an ideal place to live. But over time the environment has been changing, with shops, mosques, people, garbage, cars, but also revolts and political unrest. The friendly street gradually becomes a seething cauldron, in which various groups of inhabitants attack each other. Thus, this animated single-camera time-lapse film in VR documents 40 years in an Indonesian quarter that is becoming a symbol of society’s changing values. In 2021, the animated documentary won prestigious awards at the Annecy Festival and at the Czech Anifilm Festival.
The Choice / Joanne Popińska / Canada, Poland / 25 min. / in English – Kristen and her husband had long been trying for a baby, until one day she found herself pregnant. Everything seemed fine until the 20th week of her pregnancy, when problems began to appear. However, Kristen’s gynaecologist deliberately concealed the severity of the problems from her, which under the current legislation in Texas doctors are allowed to do in certain circumstances. Severe damage to the foetus eventually meant that the pregnancy had to be terminated in mid-term. Kristen tells her story, and viewers can use simple interactions to choose which question to ask her and from which angle they wish to view her story. Around the protagonist, in a black virtual space, the outlines of her story begin to emerge in subtle coloured lines, avoiding sensationalism and extreme images.
Reeducated / Sam Wolson / USA, Kazakhstan / 20 min. / in English – One room of the re-education centre sleeps eight people. But there are 15 of them. Only four bunk beds, one toilet and nothing more. There is virtually no difference between this and a prison. The prisoners Amanzhan, Orynbek and Erbaqyt recall being forcibly taken there and treated like convicts, even though they had committed no crime. In several scenes from this institution, the black-and-white animated VR reveals the horrors the trio experienced here, from anti-Muslim propaganda lessons to confinement in a dark hole and traumatic transports with black balaclavas placed over their heads. The documentary maps the largest mass internment of members of ethnic and religious minorities since the end of World War II.
Noah’s Raft / Tal Haring, Joel ‘Kachi Benson / Nigeria / 12 min. / in English – While the biblical Noah saved all the world’s animals from the flood, Noah Shemede has a more modest but no less important goal. Children from the local Makoko lagoon have no way to go to school because their houses are surrounded by the boundless waters. In addition, their parents often do not even want their children to attend classes because they need them to help with the household work. Noah travels to their individual homes on his raft with a 360° VR camera, persuading families to enrol their children in the school he has helped to found. His raft will help transport them there. Will he be able to convince the community that without education they will be left stranded in their lives?