Byron Chrysovergis · · 3 min read
Ten years of Venice Immersive, one Greek panel
At the tenth Venice Immersive, Greece had a panel on the island and Poetics was on it. What we said on stage, and the four works that stayed with us.
For centuries the Lazzaretto Vecchio was where Venice kept arriving ships in quarantine. For ten Septembers now it is where the immersive world counts itself.
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival; Venice Immersive, tenth anniversary edition, curated by Michel Reilhac and Liz Rosenthal. This year Greece had a panel on the island, and Poetics was on it.
The panel
Beyond the Screen: Greece and the Future of Immersive Storytelling. Sunday 6 September, Spazio Incontri Immersivo, inside the Venice Production Bridge’s Focus on Greece. Hosted by EKKOMED, Onassis ONX and Poetics. Achilles Tsoutsis of EKKOMED moderated; on the stage, Michel Reilhac, Matthew Niederhauser of Onassis ONX, and us.
We opened with five minutes on our one sentence, word by word.
Production: the tools nobody sees, an event system and a streaming prototype, built because nothing existed for an operator like us. Curation: a catalog is not a program; the program is the promise. Distribution: single-seat pods, delivered, cabled, preloaded, running programs of 10 to 50 minutes at festivals, on brand tours, in galleries.
More than 5,000 screenings so far, 19 titles, a 4.92 out of 5. And the two words in the middle, poetic immersive: presence is our product. What people keep is not the device. It is wonder, presence, and a memory they did not have before.
Then more than half an hour of the conversation we had been waiting to have in public: the immersive scene in Greece and in the world, the past decade, the present, the future, and what has to be done. We are not summarizing it here. We are turning it into specific proposals, for EKKOMED, for the Greek state and for the European market, and we will share them publicly.
What we saw
Three days of works. Four stayed with us.
A piece for Apple Vision Pro that puts a table in front of you and plays theater scenes around it, several at once, worlds blending into the real room. It is the thing stage directors describe when they ask what a headset could do for them. Now there is an answer to point at.
A documentary made for the new glasses, at a resolution we had not seen in a headset. Nature, filmed as if you were standing in it.
A work made with AI from end to end, built around an installation, with an audience that becomes part of the piece. A great use of AI, which is rarer than it sounds.
A crime story that moves forward through light you interact with. A new way to tell one.
Back to the island
In June we put a pod in a yard on Anafi. In September we stood on a stage on the Lazzaretto. Same question both times: what does it take to show immersive work well, to people who have never worn a headset, again and again, and not once?
Next stop Amsterdam, IDFA DocLab, 12 to 22 November.
Come and find us.