One part of Tribeca Film Festival is less about films, and more about innovative new ways of telling and experiencing a story. NY1’s Adam Balkin explains in this Tech Talk report.
Even though it’s right there in the name, there’s a small section of the Tribeca Film Festival that highlights work purposely designed not to be seen in a theater. At Storyscapes, it’s more about new ways to tell a story - often through new types of technology. Like "The Enemy," where users don a virtual reality headset and can walk up to soldiers from either side of the Israel/Palestinian conflict and listen to their point of view.
“What the idea is is, 'How do we move journalism into virtual reality?’,” says Karim Ben Khelifa. “ I want young people to be able to go and understand what war is without even seeing war, but meeting the people who actually do war. It is about a meeting. It’s meeting fighters from both sides, listening to them, having a visual interaction with them but listening to their story also."
"The Machine to Be Another" is also virtual reality, only you sit down and experience a few minutes of life as if you were living in someone else’s body; try out being the other gender, another race, someone in a wheelchair.
“It's basically part of a long term research project we’re doing in empathy and how do you construct your own identity, how do you see others, and how does that facilitate or inhibit empathy,” says Christian Cherene.
Finally, part informative, part absolutely terrifying, “Do Not Track” is a personalized documentary that shows you how much you are being tracked while online, and then explains exactly what that means.
“Every two weeks we’re releasing an episodic movie about your data, about you. So as you watch it, it learns more about you and it incorporates that data into the film as you’re watching it," says Brett Gaylor.
For that one, you actually do not have to be at Storyscapes to experience, it’s also online to check out at DoNotTrack-Doc.com.