ArtPower! at UC San Diego Announces First Annual Filmatic Festival

Article Content

Keynote event on April 24 in The Loft: Cinema in the Expanded Sphere and Vmix by J. Rocc and B+ (aka Brian Cross).

The first annual Filmatic Festival will bring film screenings, interactive film-based performances, digital media workshops, and industry expert panels to the campus of the University of California, San Diego for four days of media exploration and creation in late April. Produced by ArtPower! and curated by some of San Diego’s leading film curators and media artists, the festival will explore the future of film and the ever-evolving film audience experience.

The Filmatic Festival is part of ArtPower's 10th anniversary multi-arts season of dance, chamber music, jazz, global music and film. The inaugural festival runs April 24-27 in Atkinson Hall, headquarters of the Qualcomm Institute on the UC San Diego campus. Tickets went on sale March 9 (see details below).

The Filmatic Festival aims to be a catalyst for creativity on campus and across the San Diego region while celebrating the creative media work of UC San Diego faculty, students and international artists.

Led by ArtPower!’s Filmatic founder and curator Rebecca Webb, the festival was inspired by the notion that the future of film-going will lie in immersive and interactive experiences, in which on-screen entertainment may be only one part of the experience, if at all. “Filmatic aims to explore hybridized, thought-provoking, yet entertaining media,” explained Webb. “Audiences are not content to sit passively in a theater anymore because so much of modern life and technology revolves around the ability to interact and create in real time.”

Highlights of the Filmatic Festival include an opening-night keynote by filmmaker, Exit Through the Giftshop cameraman, and UC San Diego visual arts professor Brian Cross with a live Vmix by Beat Junkies founder J.Rocc. A festival workshop with David Peterson from Game of Thrones will explore the challenge of creating new languages (among them Peterson’s Dothraki and Valyrian for the HBO series). A student film festival will culminate in judging by a jury that will include the chief film curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the festival’s Gaming Museum will offer visitors a chance to see through virtual-reality glasses that are being shown for the first time to the public.

Exhibition of the 'Short History of Gaming.'

As the festival’s Presenting Sponsor, the Qualcomm Institute’s commitment to technological innovation and multi-disciplinary collaboration is a natural fit for engaging with the next generation of film experiences through the Filmatic Festival.

“Although interactivity has made its way increasingly into digital media such as gaming and even television, the movie industry has done very little to add interaction to the film-going experience,” says Ramesh Rao, director of the institute, which is the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. “We think that’s going to change. By taking advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s facilities, including the VROOM large-scale display system and the StarCAVE and WAVE virtual-reality environments, organizers of the festival have put together an adventurous program that will clue viewers into just how quickly technology is going to refresh the art and business of film-making and movie-going in the 21^st century.”

In addition to ArtPower’s Rebecca Webb, the team of curators behind the Filmatic Festival includes: Brian Hu, artistic director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival; Neil Kendricks, film curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Trish Stone, digital media artist and gallery coordinator for the Qualcomm Institute. Festival advisors are Jim Carmody, chair and professor of the UC San Diego Theater and Dance Department, and Shahrokh Yadegari, director of the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS).

ArtPower! offers a range of options for ticket buyers. They range from Single Event tickets ranging from $5-$25, to 4-Day Passes for $50-$175. 1-Day Passes are priced $21-$53. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 858.534.TIXS (8497), online at artpower.ucsd.edu, or in person at the UC San Diego Box Office, Price Center Plaza, Monday-Friday from 10am to 4pm (closed Saturday and Sunday).