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
Nominated for a “Gouden Kalf Digitale Cultuur”, Netherlands Film Festival 2023
Please visit theimaginaryfriend.nl for all future events, more behind the scenes, press information and recent updates!
Symbiosis
Winner best creative technology award – IDFA DocLab competition / Immersive non-fiction 2021.
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.
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
Premiere in NL at the IDFA Doclab November 8-19, 2023, in Amsterdam
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
Lacuna
Sonja always knew that the people she grew up with were not her real parents, but she has no memory of the one crucial, life-altering moment of her childhood. In this multiverse of flawed memories, you meet Sonja and together you imagine what was lost.
Directed by Maartje Wegdam & Nienke Huitenga.
A Copper Views production, in co-production with Studio Biarritz.
Fereshteh's Beauty Salon
In Fereshteh’s beauty salon / سالن فرشتھ , three generations of women recount their acts of small resistance in Iran during 44 years of Islamic dictatorship. In the nail salon, their nails are treated. Through their stories and their nails, they tell of their resistance, strength, and determination. They do so with humor and lightness. In doing so, they show how an accumulation of small acts can greatly impact individual and collective freedom.
By Davy Pieters.
Expected release in 2024.
Bobby Baxter
Bobby Baxter lives in a dead-end small town with just six inhabitants. When two tourists disturb the peace of the town, a fiendish malice unleashes in Bobby that will spare no one.
By Thomas Dudkiewicz & Sergio Gridelli.
Expected release in 2025.
Looks Like Dancing
In the poetic multi-player film Looks Like Dancing, our main character, O, takes viewers and players on an enchanting journey, in which the world of matter takes on new meaning. Players are challenged in co-creation to capture the physical world with its forces of nature in film. With the central message that the complexity and beauty of our human existence come from the friction and collisions we experience every day.Through co-creation, we break the mantra of social media that mainly encourages individual content production.
Directed by Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters.
In collaboration with Robin Coops.
Expected release in 2025.
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.
One Charming Night
Academic Michel, following his research into virtual touch, is taken by the hand of the mystical Puck through their virtual hotel. On each floor, Michel meets new characters who lead him into wandering into the meaning of sexuality and consent in virtual worlds.
Directed by Robin Coops.
Amasonic
Amasonic is 15-30 min XR experience where the user can experience different human and non-human perspectives on the Amazon River gathered by local communities and scientists. While exploring the installation, users compose a sonification, translating their interaction with the river and co-existence echoing the multitude of life connected to the Amazon River.
By Maria Cecilia Oliveira & Marcel van Brakel.
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).