New Art Form: Virtual Reality at the 75th Venice Film Festival

Eclipse - Jonathan Astruc & Aymeric Favre - Film Still

(Venice, Italy) The Venice Virtual Reality competition is in its second year at the Venice Film Festival, and is zipping forward at warp speed. No one really knows where this thrilling new medium is heading. I imagine that someone reading this post in the future will find it as antiquated as we do today when stumbling upon an old article about that newfangled medium called the "movies."

The Venice International Film Festival's mission is to elevate Virtual Reality into a legitimate art form. I am giving you my perspective as someone who chooses not to own a smartphone, and is a neophyte when it comes to VR.

Sunset - Island of Lazzaretto Vecchio - Photo: Cat Bauer

Two years ago we had the opportunity to experience VR at the Venice Film Festival for the first time by watching a rather peculiar biblical VR experience about the life of Jesus Christ(!) inside Palazzo del Casinò. Then last year, La Biennale drastically upped the ante by adding a Virtual Reality competition to their official program and moved the whole show to the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, a former 16th century plague hospital, transforming it into a dramatic exhibition space that is accessed only by boat (I think they should change that to a team of gondola traghetti - it would make the experience even more surreal).

What is Virtual Reality?

It is hard to find a good definition of Virtual Reality. Here's one from Technopedia that I like:

Virtual reality refers to computer-generated environments or realities that are designed to simulate a person’s physical presence in a specific environment that is designed to feel real. The purpose of VR is to allow a person to experience and manipulate the environment as if it were the real world. The best virtual realities are able to immerse the user completely. Virtual reality should not be confused with simple 3-D environments like those found in computer games, where you get to experience and manipulate the environment through an avatar, rather than personally becoming part of the virtual world.

The VR experiences at the Venice Film Festival are divided into three different categories: Stand Ups, VR Theatre and Installations. To gain access, there is an elaborate system of reservations in place, or, since the competition is still in its infancy, you can just wander over to Lazzaretto Vecchio and take your chances by putting your name on waiting lists, which is what I did. 

1. Stand Ups

What they are: You literally stand up (or sometimes sit), alone, strap on the gear, and view a Virtual Reality film, either "Linear" that you passively watch, or "Interactive," which requires some form of action on the part of the viewer.

By luck, I was able to watch two linear VRs.

Arden's Wake - Tide's Fall - Eugene YK Chung - film still

The first was Arden's Wake: Tide's Fall starring Alicia Vikander and Richard Armitage, written and directed by Eugene Chung, CEO and Founder of Penrose Studios. Tide's Fall is the second installment of last year's Arden's Wake: Prologue, which I did not see, and which won the Lion for the Best VR at the 74th Venice Film Festival. The characters are Pixar-like animations.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been flooded by the oceans, Vikander is the voice for Meena, a dynamic young woman living with her alcoholic father alone in the middle of the sea on some kind of tiny structure he seems to have created himself. I was mesmerized by the story, which is layered with dark complexities, and which transitions visually between their home and the sea, plunging straight into the belly of a sea monster where a whole lot of backstory takes place. Since it is VR, we are inside the story, not outside observers as in a film, which means we go down into the belly of the beast along with Meena. It is an utterly different cinematic experience, and the possibilities of where the story will go seem endless. The only quibble I have is that it was about 30 minutes long, and since it was not interactive, it would have been more comfortable to view sitting down.

1943 Berlin Blitz -_David Whelan - film still

The second Stand Up I saw (sitting down) was 1943: Berlin Blitz. The audio is the actual in-flight recording made by BBC correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas when he flew with the Royal Air Force on a Lancaster bombing raid on Berlin during WWII.

Filmmaker David Whelan drops us right inside the bomber and allows us to experience the horrors of the raid. I had to wrap my mind around the fact that the voices of the pilots and crew were real; that this really had happened as we flew into a barrage of fighter planes, missiles and searchlights. As the blinding lights swept across the nighttime sky, I thought, So that's where the term searchlight comes from! Not from movie premieres! The crew's banter was cool as ice, with a dash of wit and humor as we navigated through what seemed like certain death. It was James Bond cool. You are seated directly behind the pilots; if you turn around you can see the guy recording the sound that you are actually listening to. It was surreal, and I was a bit dazed when I took the headset off to find myself safely inside the exhibition space.

2. VR Theatre

What it is: a group of people sit in chairs, strap on headsets, and watch the same film at the same time. The offerings were only Linear.

I caught two short films made by Biennale College Cinema VR. The first, Floodplain by Deniz Tortum was in Turkish with English subtitles, and seemed to be about an enchanted tree that casts a spell and puts everyone in its vicinity to sleep  -- all men, who seemed to be soldiers, police or foresters. The second, Metro veinte: cita ciega by Maria Belen Poncio was in Spanish with English subtitles, and was about a young woman who is almost completely paralyzed and in a wheelchair, determined to have sex, and sets off alone on a blind date. I thought both efforts were raw but intriguing, and hold much promise for the future.

3. Installations

What they are: Installations are both Linear or Interactive; the two I experienced were both Interactive with four participants. 

The first, Make Noise by May Abdalla, was a rather hackneyed animation about suffragettes breaking the glass ceiling, where the audience is seated and encouraged to use their voices to make noises and holler words like "rage." It felt like something a NGO would produce.

Eclipse - Jonathan Astruc and Aymeric Favre - film still

Eclipse, on the other hand, was totally cool, a virtual embodiment experience, a VR game developed by Backlight and Virtual Adventure in France. There are four participants divided into two teams -- the Support team, wearing blue, and the Explorer team, wearing red. We were suited up with backpacks, headsets, hand-controllers and feet sensors, and divided into two separate, empty rooms. We were instructed that we would be on the Eclipse II spaceship, and our mission was to save the crew of the previous ship, Eclipse I. I was the only female, and I was on the Support team. Me and my partner, who I'll call Kurt, stayed on board the ship Eclipse II while the Explorers boarded Eclipse I.

When the game started, we were no longer four people wearing ordinary clothes. Suddenly, we morphed into astronauts wearing spacesuits, and that is what you actually saw -- if I looked at my arm, I saw a blue spacesuit, not my real arm. Kurt and I could see and hear each other, but not the other team. To talk to them, we had to speak into a metallic band on our spacesuit wrist.

Eclipse - Jonathan Astruc and Aymeric Favre - film still

Kurt and I stepped into a Star Wars-type space elevator and zoomed up to the cockpit where our eyes were blinded by a huge boiling star dominating the window of the Eclipse II. For a moment I was dizzy, but then things started happening and I immediately found my space feet. We had to align a hologram so the ships docked; break a code when the electricity went out; jump into the elevator and zoom down to the Oxygen Garden to put out a raging fire with fire extinguishers that you had to grab by clicking a button with your real hand (that looked like it was wearing a spacesuit glove), actually pick up the fire extinguishers, then push a different button, emitting a white mist, all the while maneuvering a platform that hovered over the flames. The Oxygen Garden contained trees and greenery, all ablaze, as well as what seemed to be capsules on either side on fire that contained...? We both dropped our fire extinguishers, and watched in dismay as they tumbled down into the fire. We had to maneuver the platform back to get more, then charge once more into the breech, but eventually succeeded in putting out all the flames.

It was a blast! It lasted for about 40 minutes, which wasn't long enough to save anybody, but for a first-time experience, I think we did okay. I was so caught up in the adventure that it was mind-blowing to come out of it and realize that we were actually in street clothes wandering around an empty room, instead of astronauts inside a space ship.

VR Installation inside Lazzaretto Vecchio

We don't know how Virtual Reality will evolve, but the creative possibilities seem limitless. It feels like tapping into a child-like imagination, or reading a riveting novel, or having a lucid dream experienced by all five senses, when the real world disappears and you become immersed in a different reality.

I think it is terrific that the Venice Film Festival, the oldest in the world, has added this cutting-edge new art form to its menu. VR is about to explode into our lives.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog