Crossed-Out Warsaw is a project about dreams. Dreams of newborn polish society. To discover them, you take a VR journey through a legendary government district of Warsaw, that was never constructed. In 1918 the country of Poland, after 123 years under occupation, gained back its independence and appeared again on the political map of Europe. 15 years later, a brilliant modernist architect, Bohdan Pniewski, designed an impressive government district. It included major buildings like the new Parliament, headquarters of public institutions, foreign embassies, Polish Radio Headquarters, and a monumental temple of Divine Providence. It was a modernist, monumental concept, that symbolized spirit of newborn polish society that times. Poles were ambitious, forward thinking and strong nation, but because of the disasterous history ,that happened in 1939, they were broken one more time and their plans of constructing the architectural heart of Poland were gone forever. Our project gives fantastic and unique opportunity to see those dreams of Polish people, that never came true. By taking a virtual walk through their dream-city you can experience the true values and feelings of polish people from that time and materialize their legacy that was about to be lost.

Crossed-Out Warsaw consists of three components: VR, AR and documentary film. The VR experience is followed by a 52’ documentary film using animation and sophisticated graphic design. The film tells the story of two young architects who try to recreate the lost district and uncover the mysteries of their city’s history. Augmented Reality experience, dedicated for smartphones, will give the unique opportunity to see the city of Warsaw as it looked before its destruction during WW2.

There are lives that are struggles and there are struggles that take lives. The life of Jean Francois Mumbia, a Congolese journalist who has taken refuge in Senegal, is a constant struggle. Director of a human and agriculture rights organization, lives in exile for denouncing the activity of the Canadian palm oil company FERONIA, financed by European Development Funds. Labor abuses closer to slavery, appropriation of peasant land, mistreatment and torture and even death are some of the accusations made by several international organizations. This project is a narrative tool to transmit the message of Jean Francois in Europe, since the international authorities prevent him from coming to bring it.

How to transcend the traditional channels of this type of struggle? Iron and Oil seeks to connect with the horror as a consequence of the multiple inherited forms of colonialism. The messages from the corporation offices in Toronto and London will be hacked with the reality at terrain. For this, we propose a project of narrative contrasts, experimental film, visual arts, archive footage and remix. The project consists of a series of short film interventions, an immersive web that will recreate the palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (which public access is restricted by the company's private police) and an exhibition at the headquarters of a European Public Institution, to be determined.

Half a Life (XR) is an animated non-fiction transmedia project that focuses on LGBT+ communities in Egypt, which have recently faced a surge in discrimination and violence, and the process of seeking asylum as an LGBT+ refugee in Europe.

1. A short animated documentary (completed), featuring the personal testimony of a young, gay, Egyptian activist as he struggles to decide whether to keep fighting for LGBT+ rights in Cairo, the place he loves, or prioritize his safety and seek asylum in another country. (Premiered at Museum of Modern Art - MoMA New York)

2. An interactive, animated, virtual and augmented reality documentary that explores the universal theme of belonging through a VR/AR experience that invites the audience to follow an Egyptian lesbian couple, on their search for acceptance in The Netherlands from the playful, interactive perspective of their pet dog, Tuti. (Prototyped)

3. An interactive audio driven oral history book that brings together the oral histories of all the characters from the 2011 Egyptian Revolution through present day — through visceral audio stories, illustrations, animations, and stock footage. (currently in prototype development)  

Film-maker Doug Aubrey has spent his entire adult and professional life with a camera in his hand, making video art and observing a world and people in conflict. Diagnosed with thyroid cancer after a winter surf trip, he turned his camera’s gaze inward and set about making roughly 120 short films.

Legacy of an Invisible Bullet isn’t simply a series of video diaries or a cancer journey, but a hybrid documentary exploring body politics and reflection in the age of the selfie. It is also a search for hidden truths amid the toxic legacies of war in the atomic age as well as a stream of fragments, intimately exploring an inland geography that is populated by universal human emotions.

Legacy of an Invisible Bullet is a visceral self-portrait of a film-maker stripped bare. An existential surf trip – mirroring the fear, hopes and dreams of a man in adrift, querying all he knows, was and has become.

What if the clues to Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious death were to be found in Twin Peaks? And what if it was up to you, to piece all the clues together?

Twin Peaks is about Marilyn Monroe. The question asked by everyone watching the show — Who killed Laura Palmer? — should have been: Who killed Marilyn Monroe? The documentary contains unmistakable clues that reference Monroe’s life and death, from visuals and set pieces (i.e. an Abraham Lincoln portrait, coffee references, the names of the female characters) to Laura’s confessions (on tape and in her diary) and narrative developments.

Laura’s and Marilyn’s personalities are uncannily similar: both started as innocent young women who dramatically changed when they realized their sexuality, enjoyed the power that came from their sexual charisma, and both took drugs, flirting with the dark side. Laura and Marilyn had secret affairs with powerful men (Horne and the Kennedy brothers respectively), and felt contempt for their ‘boring’ boyfriend/husband. Furthermore, they both kept a secret red diary in which they threatened to expose their lover’s secrets. Quite incredibly, Laura’s diary entries match almost verbatim some of Monroe’s letters to her psychiatrist. And, ultimately, the men in Laura Palmer’s life and the reveal of her killer contain an intriguing explanation as to the death of Marilyn Monroe… Once Marilyn’s killer is revealed, we probe into the more complex question -- what led Marilyn to this untimely death? Here, again, we delve into Twin Peaks for clues, and it is the childhood sexual abuse that both Monroe and Laura suffered that is the key to unlocking their personas, their behaviour and their tragic lives. In this way we are thematizing abuse as having a far-reaching impact on someone’s life, and the VR experience is intended to accentuate the empathy layer of such abuse stories.

The project is showcased in the form of a VR experience, broken down into smaller segments (6 episodes x 8’ to 12’), which together form the whole documentary film. The VR experience is changing the way we view and feel the scenes, easing yourself into the new realms of discovering the secrets of Marilyn Monroe’s life and death.

Immerse yourself in the world of Predictive Policing, where predictions are made based on data and algorithms, and where everyone is a potential suspect. In this gaming experience, you’ll learn how the usage predictive softwares can have consequences in the near future. Pre-Crime techniques empower police to take a more proactive approach to both preventing crime and solving open cases. However, they also present possible moral dilemmas  and the underlying datasets and algorithms may lead to injustices along the way. We take the user to the digital world of data, smart cities and algorithms. This game offers a testing method to predictive policing and also a teaching method of these techniques. The goal of the experience is to reduce the crime rate in the chosen city and at the same time protect the citizens rights and be objective and non-discriminatory. In the role of a police officer the user will see how choosing different objectives for the algorithm (e.g. number of arrests, unemployment rate, racially motivated crimes) produces different outcomes with consequences. Will the user and their choices of pre-crime systems be able to assure the public and reduce criminal activity? Can they predict future crimes and criminals whilst also protecting the citizens’ fundamental rights? The aim of this project is to show the user how the  data, the development of smart cities and powerful algorithms are forging a new version of the way people are being policed. The user will be offered also an in-depth analysis of these topics via documentary footage.

Latvia is a member of EU and we like to think about ourselves as western oriented. However, when it comes to diversity and especially sexual diversity, the society turns into ultraconservative crowd. It has also resulted in many changes in laws, for example the education law which prohibits to talk about sexuality at schools. With the conservative wave that’s now spreading also in the EU we see similar tendencies also in other countries. 
If you are a part of homosexual family, you need to be really brave and you are forced to develop certain skills such as lying and manipulation in order to overcome the obstacles. We see these people as real superheroes. 

Our goal with this project is to raise awareness and show the existence of homosexual families in Latvia. We also want to call people to action and ask them to sign petition that would speed up the establishment of partnership law in Latvia. 

As this is a sensitive topic and we don’t want to expose these families, we have chosen the form of fact based interactive graphic novel as the best media to tell the stories. We will approach our characters as superheroes with special skills and the user will have the opportunity to experience the situations through the eyes of our heroes. The form of interactive graphic novel will also give us a chance to highlight the comical and ironical side of these real everyday situations. We believe that in this way we will also be able to attract a wider audience that usually wouldn’t be open to such content. 

After entering the website the user will meet our heroes that all together remind a so called “traditional family”. The user will have to choose one hero with certain set of skills through whose perspective to continue the experience. To make it more playful, the user will have a task to improve his skills during the process. There will be also options to choose different pass ways. However, the main goal will be to raise the frustration level to the maximum while going through various stories and by exploring the different interactive possibilities, for example, documents, interviews with experts or opponents. 

When the user will reach the maximum frustration level, he will be invited to join the superhero family and take the action- sign the petition, share his avatar on social media. 

We will have both Latvian and English versions of the site. Our primarily target audience is LGBT community and their friends and also open-minded people that are not usually active supporters of the community, but could be open to learn if the content is presented in attractive way. 

We plan to launch the website in June 2017. At this point, when we are still in early stages of development, we are looking both for opportunities to continue work on development and, of course, also financing. 

1. For the refugees in Kakuma, we are prototyping an application at a grassroots level to reunite families. It works on mobile phones and tablets and builds up to a huge database.
2. But this app can only be effective if it is able to exist over a long time and therefore we need the help and funding of the Western audiences. Our interactive documentary experience urges you to find back the child Doctore in a camp of 200.000 people. In your search for Doctore, you will meet different other children that give you hints to help you find him. Gradually you will also understand the why and how of these large numbers of unaccompanied minors.

Confessions on a razor’s edge in its concept is an illustrated, objectlike book with hidden links to the complementary and unique audio-visual material available online and accessible by the use of an app. Confessions on a razor’s consists of:

Book: The text is edited and updated version of Bob memoirs published almost 10 years ago on his webpage. Bob is a 70 years old American living on exile in Northern Sweden who due to his activism against Vietnam War fled in to Europe. The content smuggle encrypted both in text and black and white illustrations links in a form of shapes, barcodes and digits which by the use of smart device app lead to the footage hidden online.

Audio-visual material: Online footage captures Bob nowadays in his everyday surrounding. The text and linked to it material are strictly related although creating two separated storylines that cross each other just in certain points.

App: The app functions as a jumpgate between the book and online content. The app without the book is useless, the same as the book is not complete without the app and watchful reading of the book.

Web: Each encrypted online part gets unlocked and just in such a case can be watched after all in the linear way on the project’s webpage. Beside that the webpage functions as a hub which contains the trailer, explanation of the whole project and appropriate links to digital distribution platforms and bookstores in which both the app and the book can be accessed.

The Eurostars Roma Congress & Convention Center, modern 4 stars hotel located in a quiet setting about 1 km away from Rome’s GRA Ring Road, suddenly shut down in December 2011.

The big glass-covered building has been abandoned for one year, when it was occupied by 250 families of migrants, guided by the collective BPM, experienced movement which have been struggling for housing rights.

The new tenants of the 4 STARS are about 700 people of more than 30 different nationalities, mainly coming from the Maghreb, the Horn of Africa, Latin American and East Europe. They have given new life to the abandoned hotel by giving back their original use to common spaces and rooms through an internal self-organization process which includes from cleaning shifts to picket lines.

4 STELLE WEBDOC is the story of this multi-ethnic block of flats (well, of rooms) through the story of its tenants, who are currently experimenting – day by day – the creation of a unique mixed society where racism and prejudice disappear.

4 STELLE WEBDOC is conceived according to an interactive principle, by designing the structure of the hotel as a web framework within which the viewer can explore its stories and protagonists. 4 stars represent the graphic element that shows narrative lines in 4 selected locations:

• Picket line
• Kitchens
• Rooms
• Roof

associated to 4 main themes:

• Migration stories
• Integration and cohabitation in this modern Tower of Babel
• Feeling at home in an occupied hotelA future in Italy

• Patients waiting for organs
• Donation interviews
• People that received organs
• Donors