New Dimensions - Virtual Reality Africa: Sou African Premiere at Encounters Documentary Film Festival

1 June, 2017 - 08:28

Electric South and the Goethe-Institut present the South African premiere of New Dimensions - Virtual Reality Africa, a selection of Virtual Reality (VR) productions from Kenya, Senegal and Ghana.

JOHANNESBURG:

When: 2 June 10am - 8pm / 3 June 10am - 6pm / 4 June 10am - 6pm

Where: Goethe-Institut, 119 Jan Smuts Ave., 2193 Parkwood

Plus Q&A with Steven Markovitz and Ng'endo Mukii on Saturday 3 June, 12.00

CAPE TOWN:

When: 8 June 10pm - 8pm / 9 June 10am - 6pm / 10 June 10am - 4pm

Where: The American Corner, Central Library, Cnr Darling & Parade Street

Entry is free.

The works will show within the Virtual Encounters section of the 2017 Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival. Virtual Encounters is an exhibition of creative multi-platform, documentary storytelling, curated by Ingrid Kopp. Expect a spectacle of award-winning Virtual Reality, Interactive and documentary video games!

New Dimensions - Virtual Reality Africa offers a view of the vibrant, diverse and ever-changing cultural landscape of contemporary Africa. Included is the VR work Spirit Robot by Ghanaian science fiction author and founder of the Afrocyberpunk website Jonathan Dotse who explored the Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Accra. The festival is driving an art renaissance in the city's public spaces. Kenyan photographer Ng'endo Mukii produced a poetic city symphony on Nairobi in the VR piece Nairobi Berries , consisting of her lyrical voice-over alongside surreal, layered images of the city. Her synopsis reads In the empty spaces we cannot claim as our own, in forests full of smoke and beneath still waters, two women and a man wrangle. Each must hollow out the other's core for fruits promised but only ever borne in dreams. For this is Nairobi, the city we call home. Senegalese fashion designer Selly Raby Kane presents a magical 360 piece, in which a little girl is chosen to discover the invisible Dakar. Kenyan The Nest Collective created an interactive work set in the distant future, when a group of Africans have left the Earth to create a colony on a distant planet.

Also showing at Virtual Encounters are

We Who Remain, an immersive virtual reality film that takes the viewer into the heart of the conflict in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan during an active fighting season

Afripedia - Dance Battle 360 , an encounter with some of the most advanced contemporary Street Dancers in Senegal

Indefinite, a psychological pressure cooker in VR format, set in detention centres for immigrants seeking asylum in the UK

Eziko, a virtual reality web-series set in living rooms, dinner tables and personal spaces where conversations are happening between South African womxn

as well as a series of interactive VR web documentaries such as Vukuzenzele, a puzzle game prototype about re-imagining informal settlement layouts

and many more

Virtual Encounters shows from 2 to 4 June at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, and from 8 to 10 June at The American Corner (Central Library) in Cape Town. In Johannesburg, there will be a Q&A with Steven Markovitz and Ng'endo Mukii, director of Nairobi Berries, on Saturday 3 June at 12.00. Entrance to all events is free. New Dimensions is presented by Electric South and the Goethe-Institut, supported by Big World Cinema, Blue Ice Docs and the Bertha Foundation.

More information on:

http://www.encounters.co.za/virtual-encounters

Feel free to share the Virtual Encounters Facebook event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1982243978687370/

Full programme for Saturday 3 June:

10:00am - 10.30am

Welcome & Presentation by Gauteng Film Commission

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10:30 - 11:30am

Sifiso Khanyile talks about Uprize!

11.30 - 11:45am

Short break

11:45 - 12:15pm

Shaun Wilson on Awaken VR

12:15pm - 13:15pm

Steven Markovitz in Conversation with Ngendo Mukii (filmmaker, animator, creator of the VR work Nairobi Berries, which will be on show)

13:15pm

Reception

Bios:

Ng'endo Mukii

A RISD, RCA, and Berlinale Talents Alumni, most well-known for Yellow Fever,' her animated documentary exploring African womens ideals of beauty. Her work focuses on relationships, and at Design Indaba, she presented her talk, Film Taxidermy and Re-Animation,' proposing animation to help re-humanize the perception of POC.

https://www.facebook.com/NgendoMukii. @NgendoMukii on Instagram and Twitter

Jonathan Dotse

Jonathan Dotse is an afrofuturist, freelance philosopher, and speculative fiction writer based in Accra, Ghana. He is currently working on his debut novel, a cyberpunk mystery/thriller set in the sprawling metropolis of Accra in the middle of the 21st century. Jonathan has contributed articles and short stories to a variety of print and online publications, including Jungle Jim, Acceler8or, and Brave New Now. He created the AfroCyberPunk blog in 2010 while studying Management Information Systems at Ashesi University. In 2015 Jonathan collaborated with Kabiru Seidu to form NubianVR, an Accra-based virtual reality studio which produced PANDORA, their first 360-degree short film.

http://www.afrocyberpunk.com

The Nest Collective

The Nest Collective is a small army of thinkers, makers and believers living and working in Nairobi. Together we explore our troubling modern identities, re-imagine our pasts and remix our futures. In all our works, we prioritize the acknowledgement and stating of our different individual perspectives and privileges. We dont always agree with one another, and our work strives to convey this dialogue. We create work together, dissecting and subverting the layers of how Africans are seen and unseen, what Africans can and cannot do, where Africans can and cannot go, and what Africans can and cannot say. Founded in 2012, the Nest Collective has created works in film, music, fashion,

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