23 May,2017 12:04 PM IST | Mumbai | Janaki Viswanathan
Come Sunday and you can get a taste of virtual reality via four documentaries by ElseVR, a one-of-its-kind mixed reality quarterly magazine that was launched this February
Aamir Khan in Dangal
Come Sunday and you can get a taste of virtual reality via four documentaries by ElseVR, a one-of-its-kind mixed reality quarterly magazine that was launched this February. The short films, of eight minutes' duration each, will be available to viewers via four headsets provided by the magazine and cover topics ranging from cow vigilantes to the fight for women's entry at Trimbakeshwar temple, coal mines threatening indigenous populations in central India, and what wrestling champion Mahavir Singh Phogat had to endure, which wasn't all captured in Dangal.
Zain Memon, co-founder of Memesys Culture lab, a cinema and new media studio and the parent behind ElseVR, tells us that they've earlier had special booths at Mumbai Metro stations, screenings in New York, and are gearing up for screenings in the UK soon. While Sunday Shorts and Screenings usually stick to traditional short film and full-length feature film screenings, the ElseVR films promise to be a different experience. Individual headsets give one a 360-degree view as well as binaural sound (a 3D stereo sound sensation), making the film screenings far more personalised, even if slightly isolated. After the screenings, there will be a chat about how each of the short films was made (some of the filmmakers and editors will be present), anecdotes shared and the floor will be open to discussion.
The ideas for the short films/audio visual pieces come from brainstorming sessions with the editorial team in which they pick an extremely urgent topic. ElseVR will soon premiere their short film by Sooni Taraporewala on aspiring ballet dancers from underprivileged families in Mumbai, as well as a behind-the-scenes documentary on Nandita Das' upcoming biopic on the Indian-Pakistani writer Manto.
