Report⎪VR Day at the Lux Film Festival 2024: an overview of the XR ecosystem

Luxembourg has been known for its support of innovative audiovisual industries for many years, becoming a creative and financial crossroads for international co-productions between Europe, North America and Asia. Alongside its film festival, the Luxembourg City Film Festival, and its VR Competition (the Virtual Reality Pavilion), the city has also built up its international professional meetings forum at the beginning of each year. Since 2020, VR DAY, organized by Myriam Achard and PHI Montréal, has brought together around a hundred artists, producers and financiers from the sector to take stock of the past few months… and to imagine what’s next.

PALMARES VR – BEST IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE AWARD

• Noire la vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin (Colored: The unknown life of Claudette Colvin) by Stéphane Foenkinos, Pierre-Alain Giraud
• Special Mention : THE FURY by Shirin Neshat

Works in competition

• SPACE EXPLORERS – SPACEWALKERS, Félix Lajeunesse et Paul Raphaël, 2022
• EMPEROR, Marion Burger et Ilan J.Cohen, 2023
• NOUS LES BARBABRES, Bertrand Mandico, 2023
• OVER THE RAINBOW, Craig Quintero, 2023
• FLOATING WITH SPIRITS, Juanita Onzaga, 2023
• ERRANCES, Gwenael François, 2023
• FLOW, Adriaan Lokman, 2023
• LETTERS FROM DRANCY, Darren Emerson, 2023
• NOIRE (COLORED), Stéphane Foenkinos et Pierre-Alain Giraud — D’après l’ouvrage de Tania de Montaigne, 2023
• THE FURY, Shirin Neshat, 2023

After the opening night of the Virtual Reality Pavilion (which lasts until March 17, a week longer than the festival), VR DAY is a packed day of conferences and project presentations in the heart of the European winter. It’s a meeting rich in information and discoveries, based on selected projects and those in the pipeline. For, between the European Creator’s Lab 2024 (see our interview with Mads Damsbo here), work-in-progress and presentations of broadcasting devices, the event also offered a glimpse of the XR scene that will be arriving in the coming months.

In addition to the very real emotion of listening to the testimonies of Marion Deichmann (World War II survivor and heroine of the documentary LETTERS FROM DRANCY) and Tania de Montaigne (author of NOIRE – COLORED) in discussions moderated respectively by Ulrich Schrauth and Ana Brzezińska, we’ll be looking back at the various information gathered during the day:

• The presentation of the VIVE Arts catalogs by Samantha King, and of the various Barbican Immersive exhibitions by Luke Kemp, as well as the announcement of the launch of Unframed Collection, a new LBVR broadcasting platform for cultural venues by Chloé Jarry, producer at Lucid Realities. France Télévisions and Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles also presented their latest news.
• A presentation of the latest French immersive expedition LIFE CHRONICLES by Stéphanie Targui, from the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris.

• Innovative choreographer Gilles Jobin talked about his latest creation, RESET! – BEASTS AND DEMONS, a new show combining dance, screens and augmented dancers.
• A discussion with project leaders who have completed one, two or three stages of the European Creators Lab 2023: 275 MILLION BIRTHS AND DEATHS with An Oost, Azam Masoumzadeh, LIBRARY OF DREAMS with Jane Rzheznikova, Alina Mikhaleva, IRREGULAR HEARTBEATS with Aley Baracat, Lilian Hess, and MORTAL MUSINGS FROM ABOVE with Zohra Mrad. The next edition of the event created by Astrid Kahmke, and now accompanied by Mads Damsbo, returns to Lyon in April.

• The work-in-progress sessions were an opportunity to present first images from projects currently in production, supported by the Film Fund Luxembourg: OTO’S PLANET and TACHYCHRONIE with Gwenael François, Nicolas S. Roy, OPERA GO with Anne Simon, RADIO LUXEMBOURG with Bernard Michaux, HERE LIES MY HEART with Marion Guth, CHAMP DE BATAILLE with Fred Neuen.
• Discussions on financing systems and the European ecosystem also took place.