Open City Doc’s Expanded Realities is back in September with a full line-up

Mathieu G.

Open City Documentary Festival is excited to announce the full programme for its twelfth edition, taking place in person from 7th to 13th September. The festival’s first fully in person festival since 2019 welcomes audiences to venues Bertha DocHouse, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, Close-Up Cinema, Curzon Soho, Genesis Cinema, Institute of Contemporary Arts, LUX, Tate Modern and our Festival Hub.

Open City Documentary Festival 2022 will celebrate the art of non-fiction through 93 new and retrospective non-fiction films and 7 cross-media projects. The new film programme includes 5 World Premieres, 2 International Premieres, 3 European premieres, and 27 UK Premieres, and films from 25 different countries. Of the directors presenting new work in the film programme, 59% are women or non-binary filmmakers

The Festival Hub in Chinatown will host the free Expanded Realities exhibition and a programme of talks and workshops, as well as daily happy hour events. At LUX in Highgate, The Revolution Will Not Be Air-conditioned, a new exhibition by Chinese artist Bo Wang, will open on Sunday 4th September and run until Saturday 15th October.

Expanded Realities Exhibition

Thu 8th Sept, 11:00 – 17:00
Fri 9th Sept, 11:00 – 17:00
Sat 10th Sept, 11:00 – 17:00
Sun 11th Sept, 11:00 – 17:00
Mon 12th Sept, 11:00 – 17:00
Tuesday 13th Sept, 11:00 – 14:00

China Exchange

32a Gerrard St

London W1D 6JA

Expanded Realities, the festival’s free cross media (AR/VR/XR+) exhibition showcases storytelling at the intersection of art and technology. Interactive projects GONDWANA, THE SUBTERRANEAN IMPRINT ARCHIVE and INFOMORPH immerse participants in virtual ecosystems, trace the legacy of technopolitics in Central and Southern Africa and explore the relationship between human, machines and nature in a post-human future. The 360 cinema project HANDWRITTEN uses artificially generated images to create a synaesthetic essay film about loneliness, insecurity and the increasing shift of our everyday life into the digital realm. SURFACING (AFFIORARE) is an immersive fairy tale set amongst mother and children whilst TEARLESS moves through the haunting spaces of Monkey House, a deadly medical prison established in South Korea in the 1970s to isolate comfort women with STDs. Our interactive documentary piece, A COLONIA LUXEMBURGESA tells a screen-based story in a non-traditional format traveling across time, place and memory. Returning is the UCL Showcase from students, staff and alumni implementing XR in fields including computer science, arts, and medicine.

Interactive Documentaries :

A Colônia Luxemburguesa (2022) Luxembourg

360 Cinema :

Tearless (2021) Korea, Republic of, United States

Handwritten (2021) Brazil, France, Italy, Portugal

Surfacing (2022) Italy, Portugal

Interactive Projects :

Gondwana (2022) Australia

The Subterranean Imprint Archive (2021)

Infomorph (2021) Iran (Islamic Republic of), Netherlands

Talks and Workshops

Artists from our Expanded Realties programme will discuss their projects, how they were drawn to their subject matter, and the ethics and accessibility issues that arise when creating with frontier technologies.

Expanded Realities Panel

@ Dabatase

Expanded Realities @ Open City Documentary Festival 2022

@ Magazine

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