The 68th BFI London Film Festival (October 9-20) announces the line-up for LFF Expanded, the Festival’s program of Immersive Art and Extended Reality works, running from October 11-27. This year’s edition will exhibit video game works for the first time.
LFF Expanded invites audiences to explore and experience powerful new ways of telling stories on screen. Featuring leading British and international filmmakers, artists and creative teams — including Liam Young, Adrien M & Claire B, Anagram, Darkfield, Memo Akten & Katie Peyton Hofstadter and Hatsumi — this year’s program offers audiences a range of approaches to storytelling at the cutting edge of screen technology.
Central to the LFF Expanded program will be five major installations presented at Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf, BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX and Outernet London: Impulse: Playing with Reality, Arcade, The Great Endeavour, Last Minute and Superradiance. Embodying Earth.
LFF Expanded will also present a program of free activity taking place at Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf, in the heart of London’s South Bank. For the very first time at the BFI London Film Festival, video games will be showcased via an interactive Games Lounge, featuring five fun and creative projects for audiences to play for free: A Highland Song, Paper Trail, Dome King Cabbage and Closer the Distance.
There will also be a program of four free XR works at Bargehouse that explore how virtual and mixed reality can offer new perspectives on physical and mental health: Mammary Mountain, Emperor, Soul Paint and Stim Cinema.
The LFF Expanded program is complemented by events, including an engaging conversation on ADHD and gaming at Science Gallery from the team behind Impulse: Playing with Reality. Across the program, curated by the BFI London Film Festival’s XR and Immersive Program Lead, Ulrich Schrauth, audiences are invited to let their curiosity reign supreme and go beyond the limits of their imagination.
“This year’s LFF Expanded program harnesses the most innovative and imaginative digital technologies, from projection mapping and mixed reality to immersive audio and AI and, for the first time, I’m excited that the program will present games,” said Schrauth. “The works shine a spotlight on the intersection between healthcare and technology, telling vivid personal stories, celebrating the power of play and platforming breathtaking immersive experiences at the very forefront of screen technology.”
BFI London Film Festival Director Kristy Matheson added, “LFF Expanded has become integral to the LFF experience and I invite audiences to go to the limits of their imagination and beyond with the program this year.”
IMMERSIVE INSTALLATIONS
Last Minute– U.K. PREMIERE
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | 30 min. | Artist/Studio: Adrien Mondot & Claire Bardainne | Ticketed
One moment in time, stretched to infinity: this poetic and captivatingly beautiful installation sets out to transform our perception of time and space.
What if this was the first minute of your life? What if it was the last? French artists Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot have created a space bathed in images and sound, capturing a singular moment at the threshold between death and life. Embark on a collective immersive journey through a hypnotizing universe of music, light and interactive projections.
Impulse: Playing with Reality – U.K. PREMIERE
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | 40 min. | Artist/Studio: Anagram | Ticketed
What happens in your mind when you act on impulse? This project playfully explores what it means to live with ADHD.
This brilliantly inventive take on living with ADHD employs Mixed Reality to capture the visual cacophony of our thoughts and what it means to be neurodivergent. Through captivating gameplay, follow four outsiders whose rollercoaster of emotions leads them to a life on the edge. As the characters explore their thought patterns, you can uncover your own to reach a state of empathy and understanding.
Arcade
12-27 Oct. | BFI Southbank (outside Theatre Avenue entrance) | 30 min. | Artist/Studio: DARKFIELD | Ticketed
Can a gaming avatar be conscious of its own actions? Find out in DARKFIELD’s latest adventure — a fully interactive choose-your-own-path experience with immersive sound.
Enter Arcade‘s world, where your decisions ultimately shape your journey. You can choose a side in a war-torn world, seek peace or even join a cult. Through spatial sound and sensory effects, you and your fellow audience members set out on a quest through an alternate reality, in which you begin to question your perception of free will and consciousness.
The Great Endeavour – INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
11-27 Oct. | Outernet (Free) | 10 min. | Artist/Studio: Liam Young | Free
Gigantic waves, raging storms and the largest construction project in Human history: this impressive cinematic experience envisions a future world where we achieve planetary transformation.
To reach current climate targets, we must remove a gigaton-scale of existing carbon from the atmosphere. Artist and filmmaker Liam Young approaches this monumental challenge with radical optimism. The Great Endeavour is a collaboration with scientists and technologists — set to a score by world-renowned musician Lyra Pramuk — that envisions a future world where we face up to our generation’s greatest challenge.
Superradiance. Embodying Earth – EUROPEAN PREMIERE
11-27 Oct. | BFI IMAX Foyer (Free) | 20 min. | Artist/Studio: Memo Akten & Katie Peyton Hodstadter | Free
Exploring the interplay of AI and dance, this riveting virtual simulation merges ethereal dancers with transhuman species, bringing them to life in an immersive ritual space.
This captivating multiscreen video and sound installation aims to deepen our connection to global ecosystems. Fusing artificial intelligence, dance and neuroscience, this otherworldly experience extends the viewer’s bodily perception, beyond the skin and into the environment. Located inside the foyer of the BFI IMAX, it invites cinemagoers and public audiences alike to engage with its mesmerizing visuals and soundscape.
GAMES LOUNGE
A Highland Song
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | Single-Player | Lead artist(s): Inkle | Free
An adventure through the Scottish Highlands, with open platforming and dynamic storytelling, interactive maps and an exhilarating musical score.
Set in the Scottish Highlands, this adventurous single-player game takes you on a breathtaking journey over hills and through valleys with young Moira McKinnon, on her way to visit her Uncle Hamish at his coastal lighthouse. Explore a landscape brimming with secrets and stories, weaving history, mythology and family mysteries. What truths will you uncover?
Closer the Distance – WORLD PREMIERE
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | Single-Player | Lead artist(s): Osmotic Studios | Free
What happens to a local community after a tragedy hits its idyllic setting? Explore the power of human connections in this inventive and powerful simulation game.
Closer the Distance is a moving slice-of-life sim about family and friendship in the face of tragedy. You play as Angela, a young girl from Yesterby who, after a fatal car accident, watches over her loved ones as they grieve. With her ethereal abilities, Angela’s choices will shape the fate of Yesterby.
Dome King Cabbage – WORLD PREMIERE
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | Single-Player | Lead artist(s): Joe Buchholz | Free
A mind-expanding trip through space and time, combining extraordinary stop-motion animation with witty and inventive gameplay.
This captivating visual novel follows Mush, a gloomy character heading nervously to a job interview. You are taken on an extraordinary adventure as Mush perceives the world through the prism of a monster-collecting role-playing game. This latest project comes from the renowned game developer Joe Buchholz, a.k.a. Cobbysoft Co.
Paper Trail
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | Single-Player | Lead artist(s): Newfangled Games | Free
Set in a foldable paper world, this top-down puzzle-adventure about leaving home invites you to uncover hidden routes and secret pathways.
Meet Paige, an 18-year old who lives with her parents by the seaside. Her hobbies include journaling, origami and — bending the space-time continuum. You get to join her as she leaves home for the first time to pursue her studies. Together, you’ll learn to fold the world in creative ways, solve puzzles, explore new areas and uncover long-lost secrets.
Playing Kafka
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse | Single-Player | Lead artist(s): Charles Games | Free
Explore one of the most famous novels of all time, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, as a gaming experience that places you at the heart of its story.
There are things that often fail on nothing but themselves. Is there even a way out? Playing Kafka is a narrative adventure full of impenetrable schemes, insidious plot twists and conversations that slip out of hand. Based on Kafka’s life and work, and developed with Kafka experts, this inventive game can take you to another dimension — almost literally!
PLAYING WITH REALITY
Complementing the presentation of Anagram’s Impulse: Playing with Reality, this program looks at neurodivergence as well as mental and physical health through a selection of XR experiences and installations, offering new perspectives on a pressing issue, and aimed at driving societal change.
Emperor
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse| 40 min. | Lead artist(s): Marion Buger, Ilan J. Cohen | Free
An interactive narrative delving into the world of a father suffering from Aphasia and as his daughter grapples with his lost ability to find words.
Emperor tells the poetic story of a man who has lost his ability to speak, and his daughter’s quest to communicate with him. As she unravels his connection to words and memories, we join her on a surreal journey through aphasia, exploring themes of loss, age and enduring emotional bonds, all presented in black and white, and a traditional animation style.
Mammary Mountain
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse| 23 min. | Lead artist(s): Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille Baker, Maf’j Alvarez | Free
An intimate VR experience that explores ‘dis-ease’ within the body, through the lived experience of patients with breast cancer.
Meticulously crafted and developed in close collaboration with a team of scientists and researchers, this interactive experience tells the stories of patients’ healthcare struggles, with focus on breast cancer treatment. Audiences are led through a visual and sonic world that interweaves excerpts from survivors’ stories. It aims to invoke a more nuanced and holistic understanding of this sensitive topic.
Soul Paint – U.K. PREMIERE
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse| 27 min. | Lead artist(s): Sarah Ticho, Niki Smit | Free
Unfolding at the nexus of immersive technology, creative storytelling and wellbeing, Soul Paint delves into the richness of the embodied human experience.
Explore and express your emotions and bodily sensations through body mapping, 3D drawing and movement. Using cutting-edge interactive technology, this experience, narrated by Rosario Dawson, pushes boundaries and fosters new forms of embodied insight. It allows us to reflect on the diversity of human experience, both on individual and universal levels.
Stim Cinema
12-27 Oct. | Bargehouse| Lead artist(s): The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood | Free
This installation investigates the connections between repetitive stimming behaviors that are common in autism, the earliest forms of moving images and contemporary digital art.
Stim Cinema explores repetitive actions and autistic experiences by tracing the origins of cinema and its language. Coalescing neurodivergent perspectives, it offers new representations of autism, and it pioneers inclusive practices in moving image art. Co-created by The Neurocultures Collective and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, this project invites viewers to experience the joy in stimming and shared neurodiversity.
EVENTS
The Attention Battle: An Evening with the Creators Behind Impulse: Playing with Reality
7 p.m. | 15 Oct. | Science Gallery | Free
Is ADHD everywhere you look? Diagnoses are up 20x in the last two decades. Many for adults whose symptoms were missed as children. Perhaps you suspect you might be one of them, and the algorithm has finally found you. Or is the tendency to connect what’s on your mind to everything you see just another symptom? Impulse is an immersive story that explores how your thought patterns shape your life, and combines the touching accounts of four people living with intense emotions with playful mixed reality animations that connect their experiences to yours.
During this curated evening, the directors of the project delve into the complex experience of trying to pin down this supposed deficit of attention, drawing from over 100 hours of interview material with individuals with ADHD and experts in the field. Participants include Edmund Sonaga Burke, Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience at KCL; Vivienne Isebor from ADHD Babes; and characters featured in the experience.
In collaboration with Science Gallery London.
Visit whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff for more information about the London Film Festival.
