On the small island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, the world’s oldest film festival rehearses its future. Since 2017, the island, once a quarantine station for plague victims, has served as the staging ground for Venice Immersive, the Venice International Film Festival’s section devoted to extended reality (X.R.) filmmaking. The vaporetto, or ferry, ride to reach it only takes a couple of minutes. But when you disembark, you might as well be light-years away from Lido, the film festival’s main base, with its celebrity, fan and paparazzi-fueled hullabaloo.
On the island, scores of videos, experiences and other projects that use virtual, augmented and mixed reality to create immersive digital worlds come to life in labyrinthine indoor spaces that total over 50,000 square feet. Elegant and surprisingly intimate, the setting is a far cry from the industry conventions and tech hubs where this sort of work is frequently unveiled.
Roughly half of the selected projects also compete for three official prizes that are awarded during the festival’s closing ceremony, alongside the Golden and Silver Lions. The festival opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 6.
In his late July announcement of the official selection, Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, proudly called Venice Immersive, now it its ninth edition, “the reference competition in the world for all those who deal with this form of expression.”
Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac, the curators of Venice Immersive, selected this year’s crop of 69 titles — 30 of which compete for the festival prizes — out of roughly 450 projects.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post At the Venice Film Festival, Celebrating a Different Kind of Filmmaking appeared first on New York Times.
