On-site and Online: SOFF is the Festival’s New Media Venue

When curious film-lovers and fans of new media log on to the Sundance Online Film Festival (SOFF), which goes live on January 20, they will gain access to some of the most innovative work being made for the Web. Located at www.sundance.org, the Online Festival runs through June, 2005 and new content will be posted monthly. As part of the Festival’s Frontier section, SOFF will present five distinct works from an international group of artists. To create these pieces, each of these artists has utilized creative applications of web technologies that allow for substantive innovations in the visual and narrative elements of storytelling and can essentially change the ways in which viewers experience the art works.

“I’m interested in exploring new ways of storytelling,” says Maya Churi, the writer/director/producer of Forest Grove, one of the five Frontier projects to be showcased by SOFF. “Most interactive and online stories focus on non-linear, experimental assets of the web. But, coming from a film background, I was interested in incorporating those assets within the traditions of narrative storytelling.”

SOFF is the first time that Churi’s work will be presented by a Festival or other online venue, and she says that she does hope that it will prove to be a platform that draws a bigger audience for Forest Grove, an interactive narrative that focuses on a boy named Charlie as he swims across his gated community. Set in an architect’s model of the Forest Grove Gated Community with miniature people serving as actors, the piece invites its viewers to explore the community with Charlie as he hops from pool to pool and meets the strange inhabitants of this seemingly idyllic community. Forest Grove was funded by the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts.

Sesh Kannan’s Beyond the Fire: Teen Experiences of War is an online documentary that provides an interactive Web experience as viewers trace the experiences of 15 teenage war refugees from seven different war zones. Individualized passports, travel diaries, timelines that trace the histories of each war zone, and country quizzes keep audiences personally engaged in the stories that make up this innovative and educational piece which is designed primarily for teens and teachers. An original treatment of issues of war, geography, history, and human rights, Beyond the Fire also features lesson plans for online learning, and a community forum.

Developments in tele-communications in the 20th and 21st centuries have fueled Western beliefs that international business opportunities are without limits. But any westerner doing business with Japanese companies is wise to understand that deeply imbedded cultural mores are the basis for proper and effective business behavior. Nora Krug’s How-To-Bow is an animated Internet guidebook to the intricate code of etiquette that governs Japanese business dealings. Three chapters instruct viewers on the proper ways to “make business,” “visit home,” and “have a drink.”

Masquerading as a video arcade with many games, Jillian McDonald’s Stand By Your Guns illustrates the ways in which shooting simulations translate into real-life violence, and confronts its viewers with the ubiquity of guns in U.S. culture. In this absurdist interactive piece, viewers assume the role of “players” in a range of different “games.” The piece was funded by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Rounding out the Frontier projects on SOFF is Julia 1926, from German artist Johannes Weymann. This highly artful, experimental journey takes the viewer through the stages of mental deterioration as experienced by a woman with Alzheimer’s Disease. Julia Herzog Lempp is the main character who discovers that her cognitive facilities are becoming increasingly diminished as she has trouble making basic judgments, and recognizing familiar people, places and objects. As Julia tries in vain to reassemble her own life and her own mind, viewers are granted a window into just how frustrating and disheartening such a quest must be. Using a novelistic narrative of letters, Flash animations, video clips, and decomposed noises, Lempp has created a fascinating break with traditional narratives with this moving account of those that struggle with Alzheimer’s.

While viewers across the country and around the world are experiencing this work from their desktops, Festivalgoers in Utah will be able to see it at computer terminals installed throughout Park City and projected on screen during special presentations at the Digital Center. Also on the ground at the Festival, SOFF will present a panel on the emerging technology and art form of Machinima (Ma-sheen-EH-ma). Still in its infancy, Machinima uses computer game technology to create animated virtual realities in real-time. Paul Marino, the author and producer who founded the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, and is the author of the first book on the subject, will moderate the panel and guide the audience through a range of Machinima pieces, from shorts, music vides, and animated epics. One of the medium’s leading artists, Burnie Burns and his troupe of Rooster Teeth artists will provide a live demonstration.

The Online Festival’s full range of programming also includes many of the same short films shown at the Festival in Park City and daily behind-the-scenes Festival coverage, which will combine for an online platform that captures the energy of the live Festival while presenting exciting work in new media.