David Bowie shares the bill with starmen, firefighters and Walt Disney wolves at the 10th anniversary edition of Venice Immersive, the film festival’s pioneering showcase for new forms of storytelling. David Bowie: Unseen Unheard – a 3D documentary featuring hundreds of previously unseen images – is among 69 XR (extended reality) pieces playing at the event’s regular base on Lazzaretto Vecchio, a repurposed small island off the Venice Lido.
Venice Immersive’s 10th birthday marks a milestone for an event which aims to provide a bridge between emergent technology and traditional narrative cinema. But the programme’s organisers are at pains to emphasise the ongoing scope of a project that has in recent years prompted similar sections at the Cannes, Geneva and Toronto film festivals. “This is not a retrospective,” declares the official festival blurb that welcomes guests to the island. It almost sounds like a warning.
