Someday, traditional movies that require the viewer to sit still and quietly appreciate the things they’re seeing on a big screen are going to seem as charmingly outdated as a Punch and Judy performance. Some day, TV shows will be distributed in pill form and movies will be experienced by jacking special cables into your brain stem. Also, everyone will wear black trench coats and have mohawks, and there’ll be neon lights everywhere.
That glorious cyberpunk future is getting closer every day, especially now that The New York Times is reporting on the launch of the Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival, a brand new virtual reality-focused festival that highlights the work of independent VR filmmakers (Oculus, considering its recent partnerships with film studios, probably isn’t included.) The projects aren’t just going to be glorified video games, though, as it sounds like a lot of them are taking the possibilities of virtual reality in interesting directions. One film, Colosse, is loosely controlled by whatever the viewer happens to be looking at. Another, The Nepal Quake Project, is a VR tour through the some of the wreckage that country faced after an earthquake hit it earlier this year. There’s also something called Butts, which looks like a powerful exploration into butts that shoot confetti and the animated characters they’re attached to.
The VR festival will be starting off in Portland on August 22, before heading to Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Austin. You can buy tickets and read up on the rest of the films at Kaleidoscope’s website.