The Imaginary Friend
Become an Imaginary Friend! A grieving child struggles to separate reality from fantasy. He creates YOU–his (imaginary) friend–to fight the monsters in his mind. Although you have fun together, he starts to grow disconnected from his surroundings… Are you helping, or just making things worse?
The Imaginary Friend invites you to take part in the vivid imagination of Daniel, a grieving eight-year-old struggling with the line between reality and fantasy.
Become Daniel’s imaginary friend and let him share his world with you. Discover his joys and anxieties, even help him fight his demons head-on. However, as you spend time together, Daniel’s surroundings don’t quite understand. Why is he talking to himself? Is he crazy? When his father intends to fix him, Daniel needs to figure out his feelings before disconnecting from reality completely…
With its unique point of view in storytelling and the latest technical developments in VR, The Imaginary Friend presents an intimate experience unmatched in the VR landscape. Daniel sees, talks and interacts with you, allowing you to form a deeply personal bond with the boy. Through interactive gameplay, you don’t only push the story forward but also actively participate in Daniel’s life.
Written and directed by Steye Hallema.
World Premiere @ la Biennale di Venezia, Venice Immersive 2023.
Premierhttp://www.theimaginaryfriend.nl/e in NL at the Netherlands Film Festival September 22-28 in Utrecht and showcase at Cinekid October 15-27, in Amsterdam.
Please visit theimaginaryfriend.nl for all future events, press information and recent updates!
Symbiosis
Winner best creative technology award – IDFA Doclab competition / Immersive non-fiction 2021.
Symbiosis is selected for SXSW in Austin Texas and will be shown on March 11-14 2023 as part of the XR Experience Spotlight section.
Symbiosis is a performative, multiuser and multisensory VR installation in which the human body will be redesigned. It allows every participant to embody a post-human or even nonhuman reality: a completely symbiotic human-animal or human-technologic relationship. Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF investigates in a speculative way how a more symbiotic exchange of genetic, cultural and technological traits between people and other present or future living entities can increase or change the agency of all. How will such affect future coexistence, legal rights and relationships between humans and all other living entities on a physical, emotional and spiritual level?
Concept, scenario and art direction: Marcel van Brakel
Directed by: Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord
Symbiosis is designed and produced by Polymorf in collaboration with Studio Biarritz.
Symbiosis was shown in November 2021 in Eye Film Museum during IDFA Doclab, at the Holland Festival in A’dam – June 2022 and The Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht – September 2022. Symbiosis premiered in November 2022 in the USA, at PAMCUT – The Portland Art Museum: center for an untold Tomorrow and was sold out immediately for a period of 3 months. This showcase was made possible thanks to the support of Nike, HTC Vive and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.
For more info and the latest news: www.symbiosis.show
Floating with Spirits
Two little sisters prepare for the Day of the Dead in the mystic mountains of Mexico, remembering the stories their shaman granny used to tell. A portal opens as the Mazatec community celebrates and we enter the interactive universe of their ancestors and the spirits of nature, each keeping a secret world to be unveiled.
FLOATING WITH SPIRITS is a sensorial experience that challenges the viewer’s perception and makes the invisible visible in our world. With 360° docu-fiction footage, volumetric capture of the spirits and photogrammetry of different places in nature, we create an interactive 6DoF magical experience. FLOATING WITH SPIRITS wants to share the indigenous knowledge of the Mazatec with the world through VR, because authentic connection with nature is a necessity in the climate crisis.
Written and directed by Juanita Onzaga,
a production of Cassette for timescapes (BE).
World Premiere @ la Biennale di Venezia, Venice Immersive 2023
Please visit FloatingWithSpirits.com for all future events, press information and recent updates!
Gay Simulator
‘Gay Simulator’ is an interactive virtual reality artwork and video game which will immerse the user in the experiences of a lesbian girl. It’s an artistic ode to sexual preference, sexuality and love with a serious issue: the discrimination that lesbians still face today.
‘Gay Simulator’ is an interactive VR artwork and game, based on Iris her own experiences as a lesbian and those of others. It’s a colorful and fun experience, but with a serious undertone. The aim of ‘Gay Simulator’ is to create awareness in a playful manner by showing the verbal and physical violence which lesbians are still confronted with today. ‘Gay Simulator’ presents a mirror to highlight the blind spots within our society in relation to the acceptance of lesbians (and indirectly, of queer people in general). It is an ode to love and sexuality, about the exploration of your sexual orientation and about being embraced by the lesbian and queer community. It is a celebration of diversity and inclusivity.
By Iris van der Meule
Ik ben een bastaard (I am a Bastard)
Special Mention Dutch Movies Matter Competion @ Movies that Matter 2022 (April 8-16 ), as well as a beautiful 3rd place – as part of the audience award!
Flemish writer and playwright Rashif El Kaoui calls himself a bastard, a half-blood, a mongrel. The talented playwright has lived in his mother’s native Flanders his whole life. His Moroccan father left the scene a long time ago, and although Rashif bears his father’s surname, he knows little about his roots. At home in Flanders, Rashif has been fighting prejudice his whole life, even within his immediate family. In the road movie I am a Bastard (Ik ben een bastaard), Rashif goes in search of answers to soothe his struggles with his bi-cultural identity. Director Ahmet Polat recognises Rashif’s need to free himself and follows him in his journey to find redemption.
Ik ben een bastaard (I am a Bastard) is a ‘road-movie’ style documentary by photographer Ahmet Polat.
Ik ben een bastaard is a coproduction with Dutch public broadcaster NTR (Het Uur van de Wolf).
It was shown on television last April, @ NTR Het Uur van de Wolf / NPO2.
It’s now available online in The Netherlands @ NPO start.
The documentary is part of a larger crossmedia project Wij zijn bastaard (We are Bastard).
Ik ben een bastaard premiered @ Movies that Matter, in competition Dutch Movies Matter and was selected for the Netherlands Film Festival, in competition Short Documentary 2022.
Home
HOME is a short fiction film about the uncomfortable friction between two characters trapped in a (self-) destructive relationship. Should you love another if it is at your own expense? At what point do good intentions turn into suffocating love? When is protecting the other wrong or even harmful? HOME is a film about all-consuming devotion and the urge to escape.
Written and directed by Floortje Pols
Fereshteh's Beauty Salon
During their travels in Iran in 2019, Nastaran Razawi Khorasani and Davy Pieters reflected on the women who grew up under the country’s Islamic dictatorship, and were confronted with the immense impact that (un)freedom has on their daily lives and outlook on life. Both women and artists in Iran face immense amounts of censorship and restrictions to their self-expression. Acknowledging their privilege and responsibility, the duo set out to offer a voice and platform to those who are left unheard. Their film Fereshteh’s Beauty Salon / سالن فرشتھ was inspired by conversations with various Iranian women, based both in Iran and in the Netherlands, on the role that freedom plays in their daily lives. Set in a beauty salon—one of the few safe spaces for women to express themselves in an oppressive society—the film shares stories of ‘small resistance’ by women from Iran. Their experiences and accounts speak to the women’s resistance, power and determination, as well as their humour and lightness, and demonstrate how a build-up of small-scale action has had a massive impact on their individual and collective freedom.
By Davy Pieters and Nastaran Razawi Khorasani.
The work in progress and research of the film is part of the exhibition Qoqnoos (the power of art & resistance by the woman of Iran) at De Melkweg in Amsterdam, March 8 – May 14 2023.
Improv Music Collective DNA? AND?
The power of the imagination is arguably the greatest during youth, and Oslo-based collective DNA? AND? bring this notion into play in the most remarkable fashion. Comprised of special needs children and a revolving cast of adult musicians, DNA? AND?’s infectious exchange between carefree improvisation and stark repetition elicits some of the most original music ever produced, impulsive, unfiltered and free.
A music improvisation performance in VR.
By Iris van der Meule en Corine Meijers.
In collaboration with Le Guess Who? festival, Tivoli Vredenburg.
Josephine Baker AR
Josephine Baker AR is a collective installation. Based on original drawings created in Virtual Reality, the experience invites the audience to move through an augmented reality fresco to discover Josephine Baker’s extraordinary life.
Dancer, French resistance fighter, defender of civil rights in America, sexually liberated, loved, betrayed and on the stage until her death. This Augmented Reality experience tells Josephine Baker’s extraordinary life in a virtual fresco. In a space filled with illustrations drawn with Quill, a VR illustration tool, complemented with real objects and a rich soundscape, the audience is free to move through the installation – virtual and real – to immerse itself in the life of the first Black icon.
Written and directed by Benjamin Hoguet.
Illustrations by Guillaume Deloizon.
A production of Seppia Interactive (FR).