Office
Arie Biemondstraat 111
1054 PD Amsterdam
The Netherlands
The Imaginary Friend is a surrealistic immersive experience allowing you to enter the role of a product of the imagination of eight-year-old Daniel, conjured to help him fight demons feeding off his grief. Through this psychological lens, you travel through a magical-realist story-world, experiencing the evolving friendship between Daniel and you – an ambiguous entity guarding his inner world, while making others question his sanity. Discover his joys and anxieties, and help him slay monsters, assuming an intimate point-of-view unmatched in the VR landscape. Through interactive gameplay, you not only push the story forward but also actively participate in Daniel’s life.
Origen is a poetic and dreamy journey into the beating heart of the Amazon Rainforest, from the first-person perspective. Sinking into the humid, pulsating viscera of the land, we are guided by a mythological boa snake who leads us along the way paved with memories, teachings, and stories of Shipibo origins. This collaborative effort of an interdisciplinary team of artists from Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil uses indigenous stories, and sophisticated techniques of embodiment, including hand-tracking and offbeat geometry to delve into the dialogue between our bodies and nature, raising questions about our relationship with our surroundings.
Jailbirds is a fantastic tale based on the visual universe of Philippe Foerster, Belgian author of black poetry comics, which feels like a particularly dark variation on The Shawshank Redemption with redemption nowhere in sight. This expressionist experience stretches between a beautiful dream and the worst nightmare, portraying the escapist attempts of a convict who resorts to magic to escape the horrors of everyday life in a prison governed by the sadistic chief warden. Combining the six-degrees-of-freedom offered by the VR headsets with the physical constraints experienced by the characters, Jailbirds channels a unique first-hand sensation of both liberty and captivity.
In a hilarious saga spanning centuries, two unlikely companions, Doyle the perpetually grumpy gargoyle and Chet the unrelenting chatterbox of a metal rain gutter, find themselves stuck together at the back of the cathedral, akin to enduring an annoying neighbour on a never-ending transcontinental flight. Their predicament unfolds against a backdrop of human history, thanks to cutting-edge technology that innovatively blends Augmented and Virtual Reality. As you join these mismatched, accidental friends, the line between your surroundings and fantasy world blurs incessantly. This ground-breaking Mixed Reality experience will have you gasp and laugh all the way through the centuries.
Talk show: Female Iranian artists in the diaspora
In a panel discussion we ask Iranian filmmakers, artists, academics and activists from the diaspora to talk about current affairs in Iran and the relationship between mythology, social conventions, oppression and the way in which art can be used to resist them. Interspersed with excerpts of the guests’ work. Our guests are:
Nafiss Nia, poet, filmmaker en cultural entrepreneur. Nafiss is also the founder and director of Granate, an organisation striving towards greater cultural inclusivity in film and literature. Her latest film, Die middag, is a big success in Dutch cinemas after rave reviews from film critics.
Dr. Zahra Khosroshahi, film scholar and lecturer at the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow. She conducts research on female activism and resistance in contemporary Iranian cinema. Her book “Iranian Women Filmmakers: A Cinema of Resistance” will be released this year. Her work also explores the role and influence of Iranian cinema on the world stage.
Tina Farifteh, filmmaker, visual artist and photographer. Her exhibition Qoqnoos – You Can’t Burn Women Made of Fire was shown in De Melkweg in 2023. For this expo Farifteh curated works by female artists from Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Her latest film Kitten of vluchteling, an experimental documentary about empathy towards refugees, will premiere at Nederlands Film Festival in 2023.
Ghazaleh Ghobadi, a professional storyteller with a scientific background. Her stories highlight the details of the lives of Iranian women that are generally overlooked from the Western perspective. She alternates these stories with tales from classical Iranian literature. She is one of the storytellers performing this year as part of the collaboration between the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival, Mezrab House of Stories and The Amsterdam Storytelling Festival.
Moderating the conversation is Sahar Shirzad, programme maker, writer and legal expert, specialising in human rights. As the founder of Refugee Millennials, she created a platform for former refugees who have lived in The Netherlands for more than 20 years. She is co-founder of the Afghan Azadi movement and the Azadi collective: a collective of mainly young people from Kurdish, Afghan or Iranian backgrounds who fight together for human rights and freedom.
