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Introducing the first ever Belfast XR Festival!

The Belfast XR festival is dedicated to showcasing the best of local and international immersive technology content. 

It’s ambition is to create an unmissable annual gathering for expanded reality that inspires storytelling. 

The underlying ethos of Belfast XR is to bring virtual and augmented reality content to new audiences locally. In balancing local and internationally produced content, we have sourced a third of content from Northern Ireland.

Each session is 75 minutes long, taking place throughout the day. This is an exhibition experience and we would expect customers to be able to view 4-5 pieces during their session.

Works vary in length and age certificate. 2 of the 10 works are not suitable for under 16’s. 

Group bookings are available between 9am and 12noon, please contact [email protected]

The Programme: 

Total Immersion 

Filmmakers: Vincent Kinnaird & Dr. Jolene Mairs Dyer 

2022 

Welcome to Pat’s life and her remarkable story. As a result of a PTSD-like experience during the first lockdown, she loses all of her memories. She returns to study after a year’s absence and ponders the next greatest innovation in immersive technology for her PhD. It doesn’t take long before Pat stumbles across something that lets the imagination run wild. Just before the secretly guarded launch, she is hailed a genius, but then her work is revealed. 

A Constant Reminder 

Filmmaker: Tristan Crowe 

2022 

What is the life of a musician really like? Come and find out in this intimate portrait of the award-winning Northern Ireland musician Robyn G. Shiels. A treat for the eyes, ears and soul, you will want the music to carry on and on. 

Mental Abuse Matters

Filmmaker: Lucy Baxter 

2020 

How do you sensitively translate a complex and turbulent inner state into a visual medium like virtual reality? Mental abuse is a widespread but often hidden phenomenon that is extremely difficult to articulate. In attempting to capture the visceral experience of an abusive relationship, this film hopes to prevent further abuse. 

Genesis 

Filmmaker: Maria Courtial & Joerg Courtial 

2021 

Experience 4.7 billion years of evolution condensed into a 24-hour journey to witness the dramatic milestones in the evolution of Earth and humankind with a previously unknown intensity. Chaos, rebirth and catastrophes mark the history of Earth and yet humans exist. Genesis dives deep into the dramatic cycle of becoming and passing, showing Earth and life from a previously unknown perspective. Genesis revolutionizes our view on the evolution of our home planet. As unreal as science fiction, yet full of mysterious landscapes and creatures that truly existed before. 

Deep Dive 

Filmmaker: Milosz Hermanowicz 

2020 

Lost on the wild side of a river, where fears and hopes blend with reality, Magda, a young woman, is fighting for her child and facing the most painful loss of her life. Deep Dive creates a sensual and emotional world to tell a wandering tale of two people and the shared trauma yet to be faced. 

Midnight Story

Filmmaker: Antonin Niclass

2022 

An old lady is waiting for the last coach in a sad station. Looking for distraction, she starts observing the lonely travellers. Suddenly the pigeons manage to create a connection between them all. Waiting for a bus will never quite be the same again. Midnight Story is narrated by BAFTA award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes and made by BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Antonin Niclass. 

Rhythmanalysis+ 

Filmmaker: Ann Valerie Burns

A stunning soundscape of Sherkin Island in West Cork created through local interviews and layering atmospheric ambient sonic impressions, that harness sound to create a virtual visual installation. Find yourself walking into a salty breeze and watching birds as they change their migration habits as a result of climate change. 

Adult Children

Filmmaker: Sacha Wares 

2021 

A Covid lockdown as experienced by a single woman, her busy friend and her isolated mother, each holding a different perspective on estrangement. However, none of the central characters occupy the same environment; the drama unfolds over a series of phone calls across space. Location and time bend subjectively. Digital traces of trees, homes, dogs, children, families, ambulances and streets are all brought impossibly together, conjuring a new theatrical world that expresses the fragility of our physical and social connections. 

Alone Together

Filmmakers: Dustin Harvey, Koumbie, Taylor Olson, Arcade Ltd. 

2022 

Inspired by the concept of a family rental agency that provides fake family members to lonely people seeking companionship, Alone Together offers unpredictable, seemingly spontaneous narratives and invites audiences to take on one of the roles. Alone Together incorporates cutting-edge voice recognition, artificial intelligence and hologram production and combines them with theatrical storytelling and audience interactions. 

Visiting James Simon 

Filmmaker: Gerda Leopold

2022 

Welcome to Berlin. It is 1915 and renowned art collector James Simon is giving us a private tour of his most prized possessions. But it is James Simon’s story that is compelling: a man who founded institutions for the poor and donated his collected works to museums, but whose name was erased by Nazis. His name and collection have been reinstated only recently. A collection is not about the art, but the collector’s personality.