DTLA Film Festival’s Immersive is a curated showcase of the best new Virtual Reality, Interactive Visual Narrative, Augmented Reality, as well as Location Based Hyper Reality experiences that extend beyond the headset — all set throughout the newly redesigned historic Hotel Figueroa.
Encounter Augmented Reality angels exploding out of 17th-century-styled, illusionistic oil paintings, while pulsating to a seven-act symphony. Watch 15 of the world’s best new 360/VR titles in our 360/VR lounge. Become the lead character in a short film that projects you directly into the action on the big screen.
Step into a full Immersive Theater experience as characters lead you to “Delusion: Lies Within VR.”
Explore seven full-room-scale VR experiences, an interactive doc about life underground, a guided tour through Hotel Figueroa that will uncover an invisible museum, panel discussions, a speaker series and so much more!
MY AFRICA
UK, Kenya | 360/VR, Short Documentary | 2018 | 9 min.
Director: David Allen
Narrated by Academy Award-winning and Kenyan-raised actress Lupita Nyong’o, “My Africa,” transports viewers to the untamed rangelands of Northern Kenya, where a community is reknitting the bonds that have long enabled people and wildlife to coexist. The story follows the journey of a young Samburu woman named Naltwasha Leripe as she takes viewers through her community’s daily life, tending livestock, digging “singing” wells deep into dry riverbanks and rescuing a baby elephant orphaned by a poacher’s gun.
Trailer | Website
LALA
USA | 360/VR, Short Documentary | 2017 | 6 min.
Director: Brett Krauss
In this immersive tale, Holocaust survivor Roman Kent tells a true story about love, family, and a dog named Lala.
THE GODS OF DANCE
USA | 360/VR, Visual Narrative Short | 2017 | 6 min.
Director: Jayson Tang
Watch ghost-like dancers from the San Francisco Ballet appear out of the darkness as they move slowly above and around you suspended in space.
AI NIGHTMARE
USA | 360/VR, Animated Short |2017 | 8 min.
Director: Gillian Wang
A heart-racing home invasion occurs in the dead of night. Milo (your dog) and you are abducted by the AI drone and transported through the galaxy into a more sinister plot, involving rogue A.I. robots that have become increasingly more aggressive thrusting a vicious battle between humans and machines. Escaping from being destroyed, you fall through clouds into a deep ocean. Your world is altered forever……
Trailer
THE WAMCO PIE VR EXPERIENCE
USA | VR, Comedy Short | 2017 | 5 min.
Director: Brett Moody
In this satirical VR corporate infomercial, the fictional Wamco Corporation will use Virtual Reality to teach you the incredible value of its amazing product line. By exploring Wamco’s hottest products in Virtual Reality, you’ll understand why it’s wrong to buy products from Wamco’s competitors and consequently never make that mistake again. Ever.
LIFE UNDERGROUND
France | Interactive Documentary | 2018 | 2hr20min.
Director: Hervé Cohen
An interactive web documentary that invites visitors on a cinematic journey into the subways of the world through the personal stories of passengers. Shot in over 15 city subways, Life Underground captures the pulse of these vibrant environments and the millions of people who pass through them every day. By documenting passengers’ stories of love, dreams, family, migration, and much more, Life Underground reminds us that beneath the surface, we’re all connected.
Website
SPARE CHANGE
USA |360/VR, Short Documentary | 2018 | 10 min.
Director: Donnie Oceans
Donnie spends a week on the streets of Los Angeles in an attempt to better relate to and understand the city’s homeless communities, capturing the stories of those afflicted with chronic homelessness.
THE PORTAL: MESSENGERS OF THE AI
Germany | AR Location Based Experience | 2018 | 22 min.
By: Dennis Rudolph and Justin Ryan Polisky
This Gesamtkunstwerk, (synthesis of the arts) is comprised of 17th-century, illusionistic oil paintings with a “Hollywood meets Richard Wagner” seven-act live symphony. Attendees, wearing AR headsets, will watch as weightless ‘Neon Baroque’ Angels pulsate in unison with the symphony, exploding out of the paintings surrounding them.
CALIBAN BELOW
USA |VR, Horror, Mystery, Adventure Short | 2018 | 15 min.
Director: Michael Conelly
In this short interactive story for room-scale VR, you become the scion of a broken lineage, struggling to understand your dark inheritance. Explore the ruins of the family estate, and the incredible realm below as you seek clues to your past, and to the events that severed you from your family long ago.
Trailer | Social Media | Website
CITY OF SPARKLES
USA | VR | 2018 | 5hr 10 min.
Director: Botao Hu (Amber) and Yang Liu
Real Twitter messages tell stories of a virtual New York City dynamically shaped with sparkles. Each of sparkles represents a real Twitter message from a resident of the Big Apple, and their colors and motions representing the emotion mood and the geographical location of the message. Audience can freely fly throughout the virtual metropolis, and discovering the messages along the way.
Trailer | Website
NOODLES
USA | VR | 2018 | 10 min.
Director: Thu Vu Kim Nguyen
In this VR interactive short film, a slice-of-life story of a little girl named Kat unfolds, as she celebrates her birthday by going out to eat noodles with her father.
Trailer
JOURNEY OF GOLD
USA | 360/VR, Short Documentary | 2018 | 8 min.
Director: Jenn Duong
Every day you may hold a piece of Congo in the palm of your hand. Gold is essential to the modern world, as it is used in everything from electronic devices to medical equipment. However, much of the gold in Congo is illegally mined and exported. This VR documentary follows miners in Nyamurhale, as they work to create a safe haven through the Bwenge Buchiza Project.
Website
HOW POSITIVITY MOVES THE WORLD
USA | VR (with brain computer interface) | 2017 | 10 min.
Director: Sarah Hill
An immersive narrative is crafted by storytellers, neurofeedback specialists and mobile developers. Based on the true story of Tisha Shelton who was born without arms, the experience on the side of a waterfall-soaked mountain harnesses the power of the user’s own brainwaves to illustrate how positive thinking can literally move mountains.
THE CREW
USA | 360/VR | 2017 | 7 min.
Director: Johan Anderson
A Filipino cruise ship cleaner finally gets a chance to perform an opera aria in the crew talent show, but when the show is cancelled he still finds a way to sing.
Social Media | Website
WALTER
USA | 360/VR, Animated Short | 2018 | 4 min.
Director: Christopher Kenu Huang
A man who is trying to survive in a deserted island.
I AM AZAI AKHAI
USA | 360/VR, Short Documentary | 2018 | 15 min.
Director: Elena Vassilieva
Alhan Dze is a rapper and musician brings Buryat millennials back to the cultural roots of their ancestors through his music using their native Buryat language, folk tunes and shaman chants.
REALISM TRAVEL SHOW: HERMOSA BEACH
USA | 360/VR | 2018 | 5 min.
Director: Jon Rawlinson
360° tour of awesome experiences in Hermosa Beach, California.
LONG DISTANCE TRIP
USA | 180/VR | 2018 | 10 min.
Director: Shelley Dennis
Michael, an unhappily married man, time travels back to college for a second chance to choose his one true soul mate. This time-traveling, reality-shaking rom-com explores not only the possibilities of comedy in the virtual realm, but also it puts you in the driver’s seat. Through an interactive experience, you’ll learn about yourself through the journey you take as Michael. Enjoy the ridiculousness of college life again while experiencing two of life’s greatest questions – what does love mean to you, and what are you willing to do for it?
Trailer
FIODORA’S FABLES
USA | VR | 2018 | 12 min.
Director: Fred Beahm, Aton Sanz-Katz and Ran Sieradzki
A starving hermit finds an egg in a cave. He struggles with the choice to either satisfy his hunger by eating it, or to satisfy his loneliness by nurturing it. What will hatch from the egg might be a trick or it might be a treat.
DELUSION: LIES WITHIN
USA | 360/VR/HR | 2018 |36 min.
Director: Jon Braver
During the 1940s in the American South, the reclusive author Elena Fitzgerald built a zealous following with her Stygian Ascent series; an epic of dark fantasy following the life of young Mary on a quest to be rejoined with her mother.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
FLINT 360/VR SHORTS COMPETITION
Winner to be announced 10/10/18
A__B
USA | Cinematic XR | 2018 | 21 min.
Director: Zane Comer
An interactive film experience and art exhibition that combines cinema, technology and immersive installation in a way that challenges the relationship between audience and creator.
You aren’t simply a spectator, you are the experience.
The INVISIBLE MUSEUM
USA | XR | 2018 | 72 min.
Director: Marco Franco Di Domenico
This mixed reality experience is activated in rooms throughout the historic Hotel Figueroa. In collaboration with many makers, virtual artworks will appear alongside traditional media. There will be recorded commentary and guided tours from various luminaries, including artists, scientists, designers and oracles, all falling helplessly into virtual space. Conversation topics include the end times and the future.
THE APARTMENT EXPERIMENT
USA | VR, Horror, Thriller | 2018 | 10 min.
Director: Adam Cosco
A 10–minute narrative VR experience designed entirely in the director’s apartment.
Trailer
HEADSET HOTSHOTS
USA | 360/VR, 360/VR Episodic | 2018 | 4 min.
Director: Tim Montijo
Steve-O hosts an episodic 360/VR show about headset mishaps.
NEW WORLD
USA | 360/VR, Music | 2018 | 3 min.
Director: Jenn Duong
A 360 VR music video composed with Watson Beat & Amper AI artificial intelligence, vocals by artist Taryn Southern, with lyrics written by more than 200+ collaborators who own a portion of the song using Ethereum smart contracts. The VR video was directed by Jenn Duong, art by Vladimir Ilic (VRHuman) using Tiltbrush and Google Blocks, and build animation in Unity & Maya by VR Playhouse and Spencer Greller. The 2D integrated video was directed and produced by Taryn Southern.
VAIN
USA | 360/VR, Horror | 2017 | 5 min.
Director: Maggie Levin
A warehouse rave makes a colorful snack for a coven of hungry vampires in this immersive 360. short.
Trailer