VR premieres at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. Miri Chekhanovich and Édith Jorisch’s Dpt./NFB/Lalibela co-production Plastisapiens and Ahnahktsipiitaa’s NFB/imagineNATIVE Digital Project Prize winner This Is Not a Ceremony presented at Tribeca

Two new virtual reality experiences from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will be featured in the 2022 Tribeca Festival Immersive program (June 10–19, 2022).

Plastisapiens, written and directed by Miri Chekhanovich and Édith Jorisch, and created by Dpt., will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival. Plastisapiens is produced in Montreal by Dpt., the NFB and Israel’s Lalibela Productions.

In addition, the in-person installation premiere of This Is Not a Ceremony by Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon) will take place at the festival, following its virtual world premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. This Is Not a Ceremony was the 2017 winner of the NFB/imagineNATIVE Digital Project Prize and was produced for the NFB in Vancouver.

Plastisapiens | 15 min | VR – Oculus Quest 2 | English/French

• A virtual reality journey towards a speculative future where organic beings and plastic become one, Plastisapiens is a meditative experience that allows us to consider this world with curiosity, playfulness and even a sense of wonder.
• As we are gently guided through an awe-inspiring universe of hybrid bodies, we are ultimately left to ponder how the interchanging relationship between humans and the environment transforms our identity, right down to our DNA.
• Édith Jorisch is an award-winning screenwriter and director based in Montreal. Her 2017 documentary The Heir was honoured with two Prix Gémeaux.
• Miri Chekhanovich is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work has been exhibited internationally, including Being With, presented by the PHI Centre at the Venice Biennale.
• Plastisapiens was produced with the financial participation of the Canada Media Fund, the NFB, Makor Foundation for Israeli Films, the Israel Film Council and the Ministry for Culture and Sports. This project was made possible thanks to the New Identities initiative, launched with the valuable contribution of the Consulate General of Israel in Montreal, the Festival du nouveau cinéma, the Haifa International Film Festival, HUB Montréal, Xn Quebec and Gesher Multicultural Film Funds.

This Is Not a Ceremony | 21 min | Cinematic VR Experience | English, Blackfoot with English subtitles

• Niitsitapi writer and director Ahnahktsipiitaa takes us beyond the veil of traditional media and transports us directly into another realm, where past, present and future are one; where colonial rules and assumptions are forgotten; and where we can finally get to the truth of the matter.
• Presented in cinematic VR, the narrative unfolds all around us, and we’re guided with care and kindness by tricksters, matriarchs and buffalo as we confront some of the darker sides of living life in Canada while Indigenous.
• This Is Not a Ceremony calls on all who’ve watched to bear witness, to share what they have seen and heard, to learn from these tragedies and never forget—so that they will never happen again.
• The creative team includes James Monkman (art direction and visual effects). Monkman is a Cree visual artist and art director living in Toronto. The creative team also includes Jessica Dymond (editor) and Nagamo Publishing (sound design and music).
• Ahnahktsipiitaa is Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and Dutch, originally from the Piikani Nation. He currently lives on Westbank First Nation lands in West Kelowna, British Columbia.
• The NFB/imagineNATIVE Digital Project Prize is a partnership between the NFB and the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto to offer Indigenous artists in Canada an opportunity to create audacious, innovative and socially relevant new-media works.