September 10 – September 16, 2021
At the Immersive Reality VR exhibition of the 14th International Documentary Film Festival Beldocs, held from September 9 to 16 both in Belgrade and online, the audience had the opportunity to view two works at the “Balkan” cinema: Heterotopia: Mirrors and Perspectives and Medusa. This year’s VR selection at Beldocs featured immersive content created by authors exploring the conditions of humanity in a media-hyper-mediated society, where presence and experience are no longer strictly tied to physical space. The works highlight the elusive constitution of space and identity.
The work Heterotopia: Mirrors and Perspectives, created by Léon Denise, Samuel Lepoil, and Dorian Minuit, is a VR exploration of imagined places where participants become architects, constructing a fantasy city, from its first building to its eventual downfall. The idea is inspired by Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, defined as a physical representation or approximation of utopia, or a contradictory and transformative space—worlds within worlds.
The artistic piece Medusa by Sara Tirelli is based on a scenario at the border between fact and fiction, drawing on news, social media data, European documents, and interviews. Medusa immerses the viewer in a surreal chain of events: a murder in a museum, a woman spitting out an apple, a young man climbing a ladder. The presence of an old singer progressively transforms into a psychedelic vision, merging onto the walls from a dark space.