XR – Extended Reality

XR Competition

It has been ten years since virtual reality was first presented at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and the technical progress achieved in this medium are astounding.

This year, XR is asserting itself a little more–thanks to our partners Festivals Connexion and Evaveo – with a change of screening room, which will be larger and more conducive to films involving spectator movement.

XR screenings will therefore take place in the Gripel room at the Maison de la culture, with six films in competition.

François Vautier, one of the pioneering French directors of VR, signs one of the most ambitious live action projects: Champ de Bataille (Battlefield). To accomplish this, a spidercam is used, as for a football match. The director pushes the limits of the language of live action VR to the point of cutting out certain scenes.

The Elephant I Found Under My Skin by Daniel Sweed and Shaool Levy, presents itself as an astonishing animation in terms of its rhythm, its camera angles, and its color palette.

Adam Weingrod’s Spots of Lights is an incredible documentary about the young soldier Dan Layani who lost his sight during an intervention in Lebanon in 1982. Winner of the Fipadoc Grand Prix in Biarritz in 2024, the film’s tragic story is counterbalanced by the sensitivity of its directing as well as the protagonist’s courage and vitality.

Oto’s Planet by Gwenael François is a surprising animated film which takes an absurd look at our society and places the viewer in an omniscient position. The film has a specific interactive quality, allowing you to choose your camera angle and move the environment so as to be more or less close to the action. It won the Special Prize at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Boris Labbé’s Ito Meikyū is a virtual reality experience that develops itself around references from art history and Japanese literature. Winner of the Grand prize at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the director’s first VR piece is a labyrinth composed of fractal architectures, inhabited by plants, objects, animals, men, women, patterns and calligraphies.

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats by Darren Emerson, a stunning immersive and interactive experience, transports the viewer to the heart of illegal rave parties in Coventry in the 90s, during the height of the Acid House movement. The film combines archival elements, interviews, and a subtle interaction to investigate the “Second Summer of love”, a movement credited with a drop in hooliganism in football stadiums. Rather than fighting, the supporters danced to this music – derived from house – in abandoned buildings, while consuming ecstasy in a good-natured atmosphere, without worrying about the hype.

XR Panorama

A highly eclectic panorama

It includes spectacular works such as 8 Miljard Ikken and The Eye and I by Hsin-Chien Huang and Jean-Michel Jarre, a spectacular association between the Taiwanese VR star and the visionary musician who found here a field for expressing his genius avid for digital technologies.

There are politically engaged works (MLK: Now Is the Time, which updates the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech) and emotionally engaged works (Mamie Lou, a touching account of a grandmother’s last moments).

With Jack & Flo, a film accessible from the age of 12, there’s something sweet and wonderful for all ages.

Finally, Notes on Blindness returns in its 2016 VR version, the first immersive reality blockbuster, echoing the flat version screened in the retro The Buzz.

coordination XR

Sébastien Duclocher
s.duclocher@clermont-filmfest.org