THE FIRST ART FESTIVAL DEVOTED TO VIRTUAL REALITY
FROM 4 JULY COUVENT ST CÉSAIRE 10, IMPASSE DE MOURGUES TO 9 JULY ARLES 2016
WWW.VRARLESFESTIVAL.COM #VRARLESFESTIVAL VR ARLES FESTIVAL — 4 > 9 july talks — 6 / 7 JULY announcement of the award winner — 7 JULY The Rencontres d’Arles, BNP Paribas and Fisheye launch the VR Arles Festival, the first artistic virtual reality event
From 4 to 9 July, the VR Arles Festival invites the public to discover 360° cinema, documentaries and art for a one-week immersion in the heart of the world’s best virtual reality productions.
During the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles opening week, the Couvent Saint-Césaire will become a place where the public can watch and discuss 15 international virtual reality films in three categories: fiction, documentary and art. A unique opportunity to discover this new technology.
Mac Guff animation studio co-founder Rodolphe Chabrier will be the jury president. One of the world’s leading animation and special effects studios, Mac Guff made the hit films Despicable Me and The Lorax. Mr. Chabrier is also the head of Small, a studio focusing on VR, about which he has been tremendously knowledgeable and passionately enthusiastic since the start.
The other jury members are : Vincent Perez, actor/director/photographer Elisha Karmitz, director of the mk2 Agency Véronique Terrier-Hermann, Ph.D. in art history, teacher at Beaux-Arts de Nantes Frédéric Josué, director of Havas Media XVIII Benoit Baume, founder of Fisheye Magazine.
On 6 and 7 July, the jury will meet at the Espace Saint-Césaire to present the award for the selection’s best film. The winning team will receive €5,000 to help them develop new virtual reality projects—the future of video. The festival will also give filmmakers and the public a chance to discuss the technical imperatives of VR, the need to adapt writing, and the cinema, documentary and creation of the future.
“The Rencontres d’Arles is an observatory of contemporary creation, an annual inventory of photography and the image,” says Rencontres d’Arles Director Sam Stourdzé. “That’s why we’re so interested in virtual reality. Technological advances, combined with their democratisation, have enabled filmmakers to embrace this new medium. We’re witnessing the emergence of new forms of writing. Our mission is to take note of that fact and, above all, share our discoveries with the public.”
“BNP Paribas, the bank for a changing world, has been a major cinema player for over 80 years,” says BNP Paribas Group Communication Director Bertrand Cizeau. “Our history positions us as the European bank of reference in this area. We’re delighted to support the VR Arles Festival as a way of continuing our commitment to emerging new talent and encouraging people to make films using this technology.”
“Virtual reality is changing our relationship to reality and expanding filmmakers’ creative possibilities,” says Fisheye editor-in-chief Benoit Baume. “As a careful observer of all forms of images, Fisheye embraced this technology two years ago. The idea for the festival naturally sprouted and the total commitment of the Rencontres d’Arles and BNP Paribas made it a reality.” The films in competition:
The Ark Eline Jongsma & Kel O’Neill Documentary This film is about the endangered Northern white rhinoceros: just four are left on the planet. The Ark lets viewers meet these creatures and spend time in their company even though they may become extinct. Shot in California and Kenya, it tells the parallel stories of the American scientists and African rangers who are fighting to protect and preserve them. http://www.jongsmaoneill.com/
DMZ: Memories of a No Man’s Land Hayoun Kwon Documentary DMZ takes viewers to a totally inaccessible place: the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarised zone, a 248km- long, four-km-wide strip of land separating North and South. As Kim, a former soldier, recalls his memories, viewers see a dangerous, strange, fantastic place where nature has reclaimed its rights. http://innerspacevr.com/project/26/dmz
La Tentation de Saint Antoine de Jérôme Bosch Carlos Franklin Documentary This unprecedented film experience exploring Hieronymus Bosch’s mad creativity turns his triptych into an animated virtual space immersing us in one of the 15th-century genius’s major works. http://www.poissonsvolants.com/project/la-tentation-de-saint-antoine-de-jerome-bosch-en-vr-360/
Jisr al-Shoughour, A Devastated Syrian City Raphael Beaugrand & Armand Hurault Documentary This documentary takes us to Jisr al-Shughour, in the heart of Syria’s tragedy and the world’s most dangerous war zone. Virtual reality immerses viewers in the catastrophe that so many Syrian migrants are still fleeing. http://www.okio-studio.com/works/7-syrian-city.html
Fukushima Daniel Verdú Documentary A look back at the Fukushima accident five years later. While the film was being made, 70,000 people were still displaced far from home because of the hazardous radiation. The film crew spent a week interviewing survivors in ghost villages around the accident’s epicentre and sailing on the Rainbow Warrior 1.5 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The film also features re- enactments of the accident and a map showing the locations of Japan’s nuclear power plants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pctLtUmvKg
The Fifth Sleep Balthazar Auxietre Fiction The Fifth Sleep, an immersive installation somewhere between video game and cinema, offers viewers a unique experience: a journey inside the body’s most mysterious organ, the brain. They take part in an experiment by a team of scientists testing Proteus, a nanorobot camera than can be injected into the human body. http://innerspacevr.com/project/7/the-fifth-sleep
I, Philip Pierre Zandrowicz Fiction Philip K. Dick died in 2005. Twenty-three years later, a young robotics engineer unveils his first lifelike android, Phil. I, Philip immerses viewers in the memories of what may have been the writer’s last love affair. Or have they sprung from the imagination of an android that gradually learns what it means to be human? http://www.okio-studio.com/#/works/1-philip-i.html Abe Rob McLellan Fiction This film is about a malevolent robot looking for unconditional love from humans at any price. Abe shows what VR can bring to the genre of horror film. http://www.hammerheadvr.com/abe/
Sonar Philipp Maas, Dominik Stockhausen Fiction When a drone receives a faint distress signal from an unidentified asteroid, its journey to locate the source inside an ancient maze reveals a secret as dark as space. http://sonar-360.com/
Colossus Nick Pittom Fiction Colossus is a visual tale about a stylised animated character. Playing on a triangle shape, the emotionally stirring film creates a highly personal world. Viewers master the experience with their eyes, giving them subtle control over the sequence of events. The film’s visual and artistic style immerses them in its environment. http://www.firepanda.co.uk/
Ashes Jessica Kantor Art Imagined in the tradition of Pina Bausch’s work, Ashes opens with a still shot of a beach. The director manipulates the 360° view, turning a singular story into a triptych. On one screen, a couple dances to express their love. In the centre, where the waves crash, the woman tries to resuscitate the man, who has drowned. On the other, she mourns the loss of her loved one. Ashes brilliantly explores the new artistic horizons opened up by virtual reality. http://www.jessicakantor.com/portfolio/ashes
Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness Arnaud Colinart, Amaury La Burthe, Peter Middleton, James Spinney Fiction Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness is a transmedia project offering a sensorial and intellectual immersion in the singular experience of John Hull, a man who is gradually going blind. The film is about grieving, acceptance and a renaissance leading to the discovery of a world beyond sight. This real-time 3D virtual reality experience comprises several tableaus, each about a memory, moment or place mentioned in the audio journal Hull recorded over a period of over three years. http://www.notesonblindness.co.uk/
Surveille-toi, toi-même Honorine Poisson & Lauriane Mordellet Art This experimental film is about Technoveox, a new tech company that asks customers to test its latest innovation: a 360° zenithal camera to replace their eyes. According to Technoveox, the procedure will help protect them from ill-intentioned intruders. http://www.honorine-poisson.com/#!films/c4ka
Choros Madeline Wood Art Choros evokes the themes of repetition, loops, tension and relaxation and takes viewers on a strange imaginary journey based on folk dancing and experiments with writing movement in space. https://madwood.wordpress.com/ LoVR Aaron Bradbury Art Over 100,000 chemical reactions take place in the brain every second. Which ones are caused by love at first sight? If it were possible to capture them, what would their transcription into data look like? LoVR records that moment. It is a love story told by neuronal activity recorded for four seconds. In addition to chemical reactions and the activation of areas of the brain, a form of poetry emerges from the data. When two people fall in love with each other at first sight, the heart races, the pupils dilate and time stands still. http://www.luniere.com/project/lovr/
About BNP Paribas BNP Paribas has nearly 180,000 employees in 75 countries, including almost 140,000 in Europe. The group holds key positions in its main two areas of activity: Retail Banking & Services (including Domestic Markets and International Financial Services) and Corporate & Institutional Banking. It has four domestic markets in Europe (Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg) and BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the leading lender to private individuals. BNP Paribas is developing its integrated retail banking model in the Mediterranean basin countries, Turkey and Eastern Europe as well as a major network in the Western United States. It is Europe’s leader in Corporate & Institutional Banking and International Financial Services activities and boasts a strong presence in the Americas as well as a solid network and brisk growth in the Asia-Pacific region. CONTACTS
Programming Press / BNP Paribas Jessica Lamacque Marion Saraf [email protected] [email protected] +33(06) 43 66 83 83 +33 (01) 57 43 88 63
Partners Press / Claudine Colin Communication Tom Benainous Marika Bekier & Virginie THOMAS [email protected] [email protected] +33 (0)6 86 61 87 76 claudinecolin.com / Tél. +33 (0)1 42 72 60 01
VR ARLES FESTIVAL 4-9 july Couvent Saint Césaire talks 6 and 7 july 10 Impasse de Mourgues / 13000 Arles announcement of the award winner on the night www.vrarlesfestival.com of 7 July