For those who love a good science fiction film, the Sci-Fi London Film Festival returns to the city next month for the 19th time. The event will see 4 world film premieres, 11 UK film premieres, 11 world short premieres and 13 UK short premieres, alongside a collection of 360-degree and virtual reality (VR) short films.
The Sci-Fi London Film Festival 2019 is taking place at two venues in London, the Prince Charles Cinema and Stratford Picturehouse. Guests wandering around either location will be able to find members of the festival’s team carrying headsets, able to enjoy eight confirmed experiences:
- The Book of True Feelings – 3 mins – “A simple experiment on how performance context cues in virtual reality can shape experienced emotion. Ahlquist describes the work as an inverse of the Kuleshov experiment that discovered essential principles in context cues to convey meaning and emotion in film editing.”
- Sympathetic Threads – 13 mins – “A speculative fantasy drama that follows the characters as they interact throughout an evening together. Combining live action, animation and a spatialised soundtrack to immerse you in the lives of these people.”
- Rocketman 360 – 20 mins – “A few minutes before taking off to Mars, an astronaut receives a 360 video from his girlfriend.”
- Aurora – 5 mins – “Set in a beautiful forest clearing “AURORA” gives the audience space to experience the majesty of nature through a time-lapse style narrative of day to night, spring to winter and life to death.”
- Future Warfare Simulator: The Year 2030 – 9 mins – “The year is 2030. How does the world look? What are the meta-trends that the global military has to deal with? This 360 film was created for the Australian Army’s Future Warfare Directorate.”
- En Machina – 12 mins – “Two inventors, Steve and Steve, create the world’s first true artificial intelligence in their garage, but it doesn’t seem to be impressed.”
- Cyberdream VR – 3 mins – “A virtual hallucination taking you on a journey through the broken techno-utopias of cyberspace. A psychedelic world of surrealistic rave visuals and vaporwave music.”
- The All-Seeing Eye – 5 mins – “It paints the world differently. A Mixed-Reality Location-Based Experience, Powered By MagicLeap & SubPac.”
In addition to the VR films, the festival will also be hosting #HACKSTOCK: 5 on the 16th – 18th May. The event is designed to bring: “creators, makers, disrupters, artists, musicians, hackers, developers and you together in one place to talk it, think it, do it and play with it.” Completely free and held at a secret location, every form of headset will be there – from cardboard to Magic Leap. Access to the Hackstock playground is by password only, register on the festival website for the details.
Sci-Fi London Film Festival 2019 runs from 15th May until the 22nd May, with the opening day at the Prince Charles Cinema showcasing the UK Premiere of PERFECT, while the closing night at Stratford Picturehouse will see the World Premiere of THE RIZEN: POSSESSION. For any further updates, keep reading VRFocus.