Swiss Immersion

The initiative was launched last year with the Swiss Immersion Festival Support. Its goal is to connect Swiss XR talents by supporting their presence at international key industry events in collaboration with leading Swiss XR institutions.

In addition to the support scheme, SWISS FILMS has now established the first comprehensive SWISS IMMERSION database. The most important Swiss XR projects of recent years are now available on the SWISS FILMS website. The database is aimed at festival programmers and will be used for the international promotion of Swiss XR projects.

If you have any feedback or new Swiss XR projects to suggest, please don’t hesitate to contact us: lab@swissfilms.ch

See you on the Immersive Island

This year, SWISS FILMS continues to expand its activities in the field of XR by hosting two events at Venice Immersive, the XR section of the Venice International Film Festival, one of the most important platforms in the world of immersive storytelling. Both events will take place at the Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio). 

For these initiatives, we partnered with institutions and organizations, who bring this industry to the forefront. The program in Venice was organized in collaboration with Cinéforom, Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF), Immersive Arts Space at Zurich University of Arts and Virtual Switzerland.

Sensory Storytelling in XR

Thursday, 1 September 2023, 2pm; Immersive Island

The panel “Sensory Storytelling in XR” will see contributions by four Swiss XR professionals with backgrounds spanning from dance, to illustration, film and academia. Immersive narratives have the unique potential to integrate our senses. In virtual, spatial experiences, stories may unfold following viewers’ movements, gaze, or voice. Senses trigger various cues to weave personalized plots, giving a sense of co-creative agency to the experience’s participant. Discussing how sensory storytelling influences the creative process will be the focus of this panel discussion.

Speakers:

• Susana Panadés Diaz: lead dancer at the Gilles Jobin Dance Company and expert in motion capture
• Zoe Roellin: illustrator, VR/3D artist, screenwriter, director. Her work PERENNIALS is selected for this year’s Venice Immersive competition
• Patrick Muroni: director, fiction writer, currently working on his first VR docu-fiction, RAVE
• Christopher Salter: artist and academic, director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Moderation: Laetitia Bochud, Virtual Switzerland

Meet the Creators

Friday, 31 August 2023, 5pm; Immersive Island

“Meet the creators” is an open format which takes place daily throughout the course of Venice Immersive. Creators whose projects are part of the official XR selection will have the opportunity to present their work to industry professionals.

SWISS FILMS sponsored the session on the first day of Venice Immersive with a presentation by Swiss VR director and illustrator Zoe Roellin of her XR work PERENNIALS alongside presentations by other XR creators:

“PERENNIALS is this really intimate, character driven story, and I wanted to make sure that all the environments I created really emphasize the emotion at its core. I created the art and animation over the course of roughly a year, entirely in virtual reality. Getting to stand in the scenes as I draw them never ceases to be fascinating, and it also gives me a very good sense of what they will feel like to a viewer, how to really create that feeling of immersion.” Zoe Roellin

Moderation: Liz Rosenthal, curator Venice Immersive

Please note that both events are only accessible with a festival accreditation.