VR at Tribeca Film Festival: The Inaugural Virtual Arcade & More, Tickets/Passes on Sale Now
If virtual reality isn’t on your brain by now, it should be. This week’s release of Oculus Rift may have been anticlimactic, but what the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival is serving up next month by way of VR should more than make up for it. On the TFF menu are over 20 VR worlds, some of which will be housed in the fest’s first ever Virtual Arcade. In the mix are a Grateful Dead concert experience, a police encounter, and a trip to Pluto.
Tribeca has been supporting new voices and new forms of storytelling since its inception back in 2002. In 2013, the fest introduced Storyscapes, a juried competition section that spotlights new trends in digital media and presents work by content creators who employ a multi-platform approach to story creation. For 2016, in addition to a number of installations, Storyscapes will showcase five noteworthy VR projects. Among these you’ll find Owen Harris and Niki Smit’s DEEP VR, Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness, a project based on the audio-diary of a man losing his sight, and the world premieres of the graphic novel-adapted SENS, Oscar Raby’s fantastical The Turning Forest, and Jongsma + O’Neill’s The Ark, which puts viewers face-to-face with the most endangered animal on the planet, the northern white rhinoceros. You can check out the trailers for all five below.
As mentioned above, Tribeca is launching the Virtual Arcade for 2016. It will feature 18 VR experiences by experts and emerging artists currently working in the medium. Highlights include Jaunt VR’s Grateful Dead: Truckin’, Rose Troche and Morris May’s Perspective 2: The Misdemeanor, and Killer Deal, which comes from the director of Sharknado 1, 2 & 3. Additionally, Emmy Award-winning actor Seth Green can be found in Scott Stewart’s Holidays: Christmas VR, and Old Friend features a song by Future Islands. The latter is an animated music video experience that places the viewer in a vibrant psychedelic dance party. For a complete list of all projects, visit the festival’s website.
Those interested in checking out Tribeca’s Storyscapes and the Virtual Arcade can do so by purchasing one of Tribeca’s passes. Both the Hudson and Festival Hub passes allow unlimited access to these areas. Also available are individual tickets which allow the bearer single-day access. Those run $40. All tickets can be purchased here. Storyscapes runs April 14-17 and the Virtual Arcade is open April 18-23.
The 15th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival runs April 13-24. For more information about the festival and to purchase tickets, go here.