By Anas Alyusuf

JEDDAH — Liz Rosenthal, the curator of Red Sea Immersive, the virtual reality session at Red Sea International Film Festival, said that the event will showcase exciting presentations of enthralling virtual experiences for the young and tech-savvy film lovers.

Speaking to Saudi Gazette, she said that Red Sea Immersive will give an amazing experience of moving from one fantastic world to another within a short span and interacting with fabulous characters.

Red Sea Immersive will introduce era-defining immersive storytelling experiences to audiences in Jeddah, while also serving as an inspiration and catalyst to future immersive content creators and studios from the region. Thirteen of the most significant VR works produced in 2021 will compete for the Golden Yusr Immersive Award.

“We have animated love stories and documentary projects that give the viewer the brilliant impression of being taken to different places around the world, whether US, UK, Russia and anywhere else including space. You can travel through some time in the past or in a futuristic date where you meet and interact with amazing characters,” Rosenthal pointed out.

Rosenthal said that the Red Sea Immersive program consists of 21 Virtual Reality (VR) experiences. These are the best ever products that have been made during 2020 and 2021. The program will be presented in collaboration with Art Jameel at Jeddah’s new creative complex – Hayy Jameel.

"We are delighted to welcome you to this amazing center of Hayy Jameel. You can experience amazing things in your real life as you are immersed with a new virtual world, which is extremely exciting, and hence it is called immersive,” she said.

Rosenthal noted that there are three different formats for the presentation of experiences. Among them, VR is the most sophisticated one while compared to Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR), which can also provide brilliant artistic experiences. AR uses a real-world setting while VR is completely virtual by using a headset device. AR enhances both the virtual and real world while VR only enhances a fictional reality.

Mixed Reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations, where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed Reality does not exclusively take place in either the physical world or virtual world, but is a hybrid of reality and virtual reality.

Rosenthal, the lead curator of Venice VR at the Venice International Film Festival, said that the Red Sea Immersive will be adjudicated by an all-female jury of three leading international artists, including Saudi Arabia’s Sarah Mohanna Al-Abdali. At Venice Film Festival, she was instrumental in the launch of Venice VR in 2017, the first and only official immersive content selection and competition.

Rosenthal is the CEO & Founder of trail-blazing innovation company Power to the Pixel. At the company, she created the first-ever international programs for developing, financing and showcasing interactive and immersive works. As a renowned digital film and media expert and an early advocate and pioneer of digital distribution and filmmaking, she advises international media companies, film financing organizations, filmmakers and film festivals about using cutting-edge distribution and production techniques and new film business models.