Here’s All The Immersive Offerings You Can See At Tribeca Film Festival This Week

The 18th annual Tribeca Film Festival, which takes place this week, will include 30 projects in its Tribeca Immersive sidebar dedicated to virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality experiences.

Tribeca Immersive is divided into two events: Virtual Arcade and Cinema360, which will run throughout the duration of the festival. Virtual Arcade is comprised of 22 vr/ar/mr experiences and exhibits, while Cinema360 will feature 12 curated screenings in a custom vr theater.

Within the Virtual Arcade sections, five projects are part of the Storyscapes juried competition, which focuses on new trends and innovative work across mediums that integrate various forms of audience participation.

For info on attending, visit the Tribeca Immersive website. Here is the full list of projects:

VIRTUAL ARCADE

• 2nd Civil War (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Kevin Cornish
  Key Collaborators: Moth + Flame, Conversive, Pollution Studios, Denis Sharabari
  2nd Civil War has broken out in America. In this voice-activated VR experience, you will drop into an Insurgent Hot Zone, interrogate the inner circle of the insurgency and decide: which side are you on?
• 7 Lives (World Premiere) – Luxembourg, France, Belgium
  Project Creator: Charles Ayats, Sabrina Calvo, Jan Kounen
  Key Collaborators: Franck Weber, Céline Tricart, Marie Blondiaux, Adrien Oumhani
  An afternoon in June. Tokyo. 5 p.m. A girl jumps in front of the subway. Her soul rises from the rails. On the platform, the six people who witnessed the scene are in shock. It revived a trauma in them, painful memories they never overcame.
• Ayahuasca (World Premiere) – France, Luxembourg
  Project Creator: Jan Kounen
  Key Collaborators: Guillermo Arévalo Valera – Shaman, Antoine Cayrol, Marion Guth, Vincent Guttman, Nicolas Becker, Nicolas Blies, Stéphane Hueber-Blies
  Participants are immersed in visions triggered by a dose of ayahuasca. The spectator lives this through director Jan Kounen’s eyes as he travels on a spiritual voyage.
• Bonfire (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Eric Darnell, Baobab Studios
  Key Collaborators: Maureen Fan, Larry Cutler, Kane Lee, Shannon Ryan, Ali Wong
  Nice job. You’ve crashed your spaceship into an alien jungle. Your instincts, nourishment cylinders, and a wary robot sidekick are all you have for survival… or so you think. With Ali Wong.
• Cave (US Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Ken Perlin, Kris Layng, Sebastian Herscher
  Key Collaborators: Jess Bass
  Cave is a coming-of-age story told through cutting edge Parallux technology, featuring a fully immersive holographic VR experience that can be shared by many audience members at once.
• Children Do Not Play War (World Premiere) – Uganda, Brazil, USA
  Project Creator: Fabiano Mixo
  Children Do Not Play War is a cinematic VR tale of the war in Uganda told through the eyes of a young girl. Also playing in the program Cinema360.
• Common Ground (World Premiere) – UK
  Project Creator: Darren Emerson
  Key Collaborators: Ashley Cowan, Conan Roberts
  Explore the notorious Aylesbury Estate, concrete monument to the history and legacy of social housing in the UK, and home to a community affected by forces beyond their control.
• Doctor Who: The Runaway (World Premiere) – UK
  Project Creator: BBC / Passion Animation Studios
  Key Collaborators: Mathias Chelebourg
  Step inside the TARDIS with the Doctor in this beautiful, animated, interactive story from the Doctor Who team. With Jodie Whittaker, Richard Elfyn.
• A Drop in the Ocean (World Premiere) – UK, France, USA
  Project Creator: Adam May, Chris Campkin, Chris Parks
  Key Collaborators: Philippe Cousteau, Ashlan Cousteau, Vision3, Conservation International
  Discover a miniature universe at the heart of our survival. Become part of a Social VR adventure through the ocean food chain, to reveal a crisis of our making.
• Ello (World Premiere) – China
  Project Creator: Haodan Su
  Key Collaborators: Zhiyuan Ma, Hao Luo
  Ello is a sweet story about loneliness and friendship. When people expect friendship or love, proactively pursuing rather than passively waiting might lead to a surprising end.
• Gymnasia (World Premiere) – Canada
  Project Creator: Clyde Henry Productions
  Key Collaborators: Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël
  Step into a dream, where the ghostly ephemera of a lost childhood await you.
• Into the Light (New York Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Jessica Brillhart, Igal Nassima
  Key Collaborator: Yo-Yo Ma
  Ascend Spring Studios and move through the movements of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor,” performed by the legendary Yo-Yo Ma.
• Stealing Ur Feelings (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Noah Levenson
  Key Collaborators: Brett Gaylor
  Stealing Ur Feelings is an AR experience about the power of facial emotion recognition AI that exploits your reaction to its own content in horrifying ways.
• Unceded Territories (World Premiere) – Canada/USA
  Project Creator: Paisley Smith and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
  Key Collaborators: Ketsia Vedrine, Peter Denny, Patrick Weekes, Jason Legge
  Through infectious interaction, build a natural world made up of the colorful, surrealist art of acclaimed First Nations painter Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, until you are confronted by Colonialist Snake who forces you to see the truth behind your actions.
• War Remains (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Dan Carlin, MWM Immersive
  Key Collaborators: Brandon Oldenburg, Ethan Stearns, Flight School Studio, Skywalker Sound
  Podcast legend Dan Carlin employs the unique power of virtual reality to transport audiences into one of the most extreme battlefields in history – the Western Front of The First World War.
• Where There’s Smoke (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Lance Weiler
  Key Collaborators: Peter English, Julia Pontecorvo, Dale Worstall
  Where There’s Smoke mixes documentary, immersive theater, and an escape room to explore memory and loss. Set within the aftermath of a blaze, participants race to determine the cause of a tragic fire by sifting through the charred remains.
• Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Pete Billington, Jessica Yaffa Shamash
  Key Collaborators: Fable, Facebook Sound+Design, Third Rail Projects, Oculus Studios, Edward Saatchi, Chris Hanson
  Transport into the magic of VR cinema, where only you can help Lucy discover what’s truly hiding inside the walls of her house. With Jeffrey Wright, Noah Schnapp, Elizabeth Carena, Cadence Goblirsch.

STORYSCAPES

One Storyscapes nominee will be selected by a jury to receive the Storyscapes Award, presented by AT&T, which recognizes groundbreaking approaches in storytelling and technology. The five projects come from Australia, Egypt, Iraq, Netherlands, U.K. and U.S.A. This year, four of the five experiences for the award were made by female creators.

• Another Dream (حلم آخر) (World Premiere) – Netherlands, USA, Egypt
  Project Creator: Tamara Shogaolu, Ado Ato Pictures
  Key Collaborators: Lauren Dubowski, Natalya Sarch, Nada El-Kouny, Anastasia Semenoff (alpha_rats), Martijn Zandvliet, Gata Mahardika, Ytje Veenstra, Audioimmersive.com.
  Another Dream brings to life the gripping, true story of an Egyptian lesbian couple. Faced with a post-Revolution backlash against their community, they must choose between love and home.
• The Collider (North American Premiere)
  Project Creator: Anagram
  Enter The Collider, a machine built to decipher the mysteries of human relationships. The Collider is an immersive virtual and theatrical experience exploring power, dependency, and the space between people.
• Future Dreaming (World Premiere)
  Project Creator: Sutu
  Key Collaborators: Charles Henden, Alison Lockyer, Maverick Eaton, Maxie Coppin, Nelson Coppin
  Step into a time-warping dream bubble as four young Aboriginal Australians approach their futures. Be ready for an intergalactic adventure. Look out for the space emus!
• The Key  (World Premiere) – USA, Iraq
  Project Creator: Celine Tricart
  Key Collaborators: Gloria Bradbury
  An interactive VR experience taking the viewer on a journey through memories. Will they be able to unlock the mystery behind the mysterious Key without sacrificing too much?
• Traitor (World Premiere) – UK
  Project Creator: Pilot Theatre, Lucy Hammond
  Key Collaborators: Matt Stuttard Parker, Richard Hurford, Rebecca Saw, Lydia Denno, Jonathan Eato
  Eight hours ago, teenager Emma McCoy vanished. All she left behind was a game. Now it’s the viewer’s job to find her.

TRIBECA CINEMA360

• 12 Seconds of Gunfire: The True Story of a School Shooting (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Suzette Moyer, Seth Blanchard
  Key Collaborators: John Woodrow Cox
  After a gunman shoots her best friend on the playground, a first-grade girl confronts a journey of trauma and loss after the Townville, South Carolina, school shooting.
•  Ashe ’68 (New York Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Brad Lichtenstein
  Key Collaborators: Beth Hubbard, Rex Miller, Jeff Fitzsimmons
  Arthur Ashe emerged as an elite athlete who parlayed his fame as the first black man to win the US Open tennis championship into a lifetime devoted to fighting injustice.
• Accused No. 2: Walter Sisalu (North American Premiere) – France
  Project Creator: Nicolas Champeaux & Gilles Porte
  Key Collaborators: Oerd Van Cuijlenborg
  A trove of 256 hours of sound archives of the Rivonia trial bring back to life the political battle waged by Nelson Mandela and his seven co-defendants against apartheid. This film looks at one of them in particular: Accused No. 2, Walter Sisulu.
• 11.11.18 (World Premiere) – Belgium, France
  Project Creator: Sébastien Tixador et Django Schreven
  Key Collaborators: Boris Baum, Sébastien Plazeneix, Antoine Sauwen
  A few minutes before the suspension of fighting in World War on November 11, 1918, soldiers have to face a series of decisions.
• Space Buddies (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Matt Jenkins, Ethan Shaftel
  Key Collaborators: Piotr Karwas
  It takes a special team of astronauts to survive the voyage to Mars without going insane. This crew will be lucky to make it past launch.
• Mr. Buddha (董仔的人)(International Premiere) – Taiwan R.O.C.
  Project Creator: HTC Corporation, Lee Chung
  Key Collaborators: HTC VIVE, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee
  The short crime story takes place in a car, following Dong-Tzu, Ching-Tsai, and Ni-Sang, who get their hands on a valuable antique only to have the fruits of their labor shared with the newcomer, A-Che.
• Mercy (New York Premiere) – USA, Cameroon
  Project Creator: Armando Kirwin
  Key Collaborators: Sutu, Ruben Plomp, Emma Debany, AMK LTD, Oculus VR for Good
  Edith, a 14-year-old from Cameroon, journeys through the jungle seeking life-transforming surgery to remove a tumor on her jaw.
• Girl Icon (New York Premiere) – USA, India
  Project Creator: Sadah Espii Proctor
  Key Collaborators: Amy Seidenwurm, Skye Von, Paula Cuneo, Lauren Burmaster, Espii Studios, little GIANT Wolf, Oculus VR for Good
  Globally, over 130 million girls do not go to school. Step into the life of one girl from India who is inspired by Malala Yousafzai to change her course.
• Children Do Not Play War (World Premiere) – Uganda, Brazil, USA
  Project Creator: Fabiano Mixo
  Key Collaborators: Amy Seidenwurm, VILD Studio, Oculus VR for Good
  Children Do Not Play War is a cinematic VR tale of the war in Uganda told through the eyes of a young girl. Also playing in the Virtual Arcade.
• Armonia (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Bracey Smith
  Key Collaborators: Anja Moreno-Smith, Neil Dvorak, Sara K White, Josh Bernhard, Jacques Lalo, Daniel Coletta
  Armonia takes the ride of the dynamic original piano concerto “Armonia Degli Uccelli,” and marries it to a universally accessible animation, to produce a uniquely layered spectacle of spatial storytelling.
• Dreams of The Jaguar’s Daughter (World Premiere) – USA, Mexico
  Project Creator: Alfredo Salazar-Caro
  Key Collaborators: Genesis Mancheren Abaj, Prashast Thapan, Tarek Turkey
  Dreams Of The Jaguar’s Daughter is a surreal VR documentary where Achik’, the spirit of a young Maya immigrant, guides the viewer through her memories of an arduous journey north.
• Water Melts (World Premiere) – USA
  Project Creator: Lilian Mehrel, Mary Evangelista
  Key Collaborators: Ting Liu, Maya Edelman. Ariel Marx
  A blue-hearted rom-com about people who are going to lose someone they love. Nobody knows what to say, so they bicker, laugh/cry, get married. It’s a romantic comedy, after all.

(Pictured at top, l to r: “Cave,” “Space Buddies,” “12 Seconds of Gunfire”)