For the seventh episode of ▶▶FAST FORWARD, we are joined by Michel Reilhac a narrative architect and long-time transmedia and immersive media pioneer.

Michel is the Head of Studies at the Venice Biennale College, and the VR competition curator for the Venice Biennale International Film Festival since its inaugural competition in 2017.

From 2002-2012, Michel was Head of Cinema & Film Acquisitions at Arte France and executive director of Arte France Cinema, co-producing around 30 international independent feature films each year, including Lars Von Trier's Antichrist and Melancholia. In 2013, Michel was named Man of the Year 2012 in Film by industry magazine Le Film Français. Michel is also a virtual reality filmmaker himself. His first production Viens! premiered at Sundance in 2016.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A moderated by AC Coppens, CEO/Founder of THE CATALYSTS.

▶▶ More about Michel

As a speaker and educator, Michel is renowned for his comprehensive and critical understanding of the immersive media landscape.

Michel has a keen focus on innovation in the creative development and application of narratives—not only in film and television, but in broader media and communication contexts, where new storytelling practices are disrupting conventional models.

In his teaching, Michel focuses in particular on enabling filmmakers to find a platform for fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience.

He strives to allow artists to appropriate XR as a new art form and focuses on immersive storytelling as an artistic medium.

Michel is regularly invited to speak and teach at major international events, including the Cannes International Film Festival, SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, TEDx, CPH:DOX, Dixit, Power to the Pixel, Sunny Side of the Doc, FEMIS and many more.

Michel is currently developing an international residency on the the island of Lamu, Kenya.

This residency seeks to foster innovative work by creators and small teams from across East Africa, and lay the foundations for a VR hub that celebrates Swahili culture.

In 2017-2018 Michel was head of the award-winning independent production company Submarine Channel in Amsterdam.

Currently, he also curates the immersive content program at Series Mania in Lille, France.

References, links and resources from Michel’s talk

▶▶ While we crave to be together and meet in the real world, VR can be the next best thing to reality. Platforms such as NeosVR or Museum of Other Realities or Engage provide this alternative.

▶▶ AltspaceVR and VRchat have seen a surge in their use in the first months of the pandemic.

▶▶ Social VR is said to be the “next killer app”, and its role will grow when Facebook launches Horizon.

▶▶ VR is already used for large scale social events and as a place of remote collaboration.

▶▶ Apple’s secretive AR and VR headset plans have been altered by internal differences.

▶▶ How do avatars represent us? “Is it wrong to be skeptical of anyone, in 2020, who has an anime avatar? Bc my gut says....yes.” tweeted Caroline Sinders.

▶▶ Hubs by Mozilla are compatible with almost all devices, from mobile to headsets.

▶▶ Identity in VR has been a long running debate, as shown by reflections on the issue from the 1990s and by a more recent discussion of this topic.

▶▶ The platform Second Life can be used to carve out space for representing marginalized identities.

▶▶ Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is Me tells the story of ability-diverse protagonists and their avatars making a home for themselves in the VR Metaverse.

▶▶“Presence will be the Haute Couture of communication possibilities” noted Michel Reilhac.

▶▶ VR sometimes triggers nausea issue – and these seem to affect women more often than men. “A friend of mine stumbled over a footnote in an esoteric army report about simulator sickness in virtual environments. Sure enough, military researchers had noticed that women seemed to get sick at higher rates in simulators than men” – writes Danah Boyd. We need to make sure we’re not designing people out of the system from the beginning, remarked Alysha Naples during the discussion.

▶▶ What is the future of XR in fashion? An overview of VR and AR apps used by fashion brands.

▶▶ How does real-life economic reflect in virtual worlds? Kei Akatsu from VRChat says that in the future “users might pay for a hat for their avatars to wear. Users can also trade an avatar itself, a ticket for some community event or the right to use live-streaming services in VR” in this article on blockchain uses for VR.

▶▶ European MEDIA Program is investing €1,5 M in research on how cinemas can become hubs of innovation for local communities.