Sundance Film Festival Embraces XR Visions

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival featured a rich program of new films from across the world. Still, many of the attendees were more excited about the program of XR experiences, both narrative and abstract, available at Sundance’s New Frontier. From narrative biographic films rendered as interactive XR worlds (The Book of Distance), abstract environments built to bring people together (Metamorphic), and even a “moon walking” experience in which the user is submerged, headset-on, in an actual swimming pool (Spaced Out), XR was a powerful presence in Utah this year.

L to R: The Book of Distance, Metamorphic, Spaced Out; courtesy the Sundance Institute

Cinema of Lust

Image: Nymphomaniac, 2013, Zentropa Entertainments

The relationship between adult entertainment and mainstream cinema has been flirtatious but non-committal for decades. From groundbreaking, award-winning feature films to the boldly creative efforts of porn’s most ambitious auteurs, the world of explicit sex has informed, inspired, and at times infiltrated the vanilla world of mainstream movies. While the mid-2010s saw a boom in 3D films packing cinemas, subsequent years have seemed notably devoid of any major tech advances to how screen stories are told.

Danish enfant terrible of cinema, Lars Von Trier, courted controversy once again with the release of Antichrist (2009) and his following two-part film, Nymphomaniac (2013). Containing multiple depictions of explicit sexual activity, the films featured major Hollywood talents and saw widespread critical and commercial success. Explicit sex doesn’t automatically equal pornography, but these films proved Hollywood was becoming even more flirtatious than ever with the world of Adult.

A New Hollywood Porn Union

An X rated film, Midnight Cowboy, has won an Oscar. Will VR sex be next?

Virtual Reality and its related fields mixed, augmented, and cross reality are making waves throughout the porn industry, as the booming popularity of VR porn proves. Although Hollywood still won’t directly deal with the porn world and is yet to unleash a true VR or XR cinematic masterpiece, there’s every reason to believe both industries will quietly support each other’s ventures outside of tradition and into VR.

Hollywood’s further adoption of VR and XR tech to augment the storytelling tools of creators will ultimately become the affordable tools of the next generation of filmmakers. Whether training their VR camera rigs at everyday human interactions, chaotic action sequences, utter science-fiction, or a simple bout of fellatio, the continued smashing of sexual taboos and technological barriers in cinema will ensure creators from these two worlds become closer entwined than ever.