Release of our Official Version (Cinematographic Virtual Reality / 8K / Ambisonics)
You will be the invisible witness of this Uku Pacha journey.
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Synopsis
A young influencer, a businessman, and a journalist, summoned by the mysterious Mr. Owen, meet in a van that travels through Los Andes, symbolizing the Uku Pacha. According to the Andean worldview, the Uku Pacha is the world of the unconscious, the place where this always-changing immersive and modular story takes place. All three characters are implicated in having participated in something terrible. While they try to understand why they are there and what it is that unites them, these accusations do not stop. Guilt or refusal to accept the facts will create an unbearable tension between them. On some occasions, immersed in absolute loneliness, they will seek company, on others they will want to flee. Each trip is a different story, a recurring dream where events never happen in the same way or in the same order; a new opportunity for salvation and transition to the Kay Pacha or the world of consciousness, or a condemnation to repetition and incessant wandering.
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Project's Story
In November 2017, the International Orchid Festival and the University of Cuenca joined forces to organize a seminar on The Future of Cinema. Among the guests were Diego Bonilla (director) who gave a lecture on modular cinema and Helena Galán (screenwriter) who spoke about screenwriting for 360. The germ of the project was built during those days of cinema and discussion about cinema, in the beautiful Cuenca, Ecuador.
From a text by Sartre, of which only remains a brief reference, and a subsequent nod to Agatha Christie, Diego and Helena began to work on the project we know today: a kind of dream in a symbolic space where morality is explored. Technically speaking, the "dream" would be in the form of a short film with a modular narrative in virtual reality, so that it could be constructed in different ways and always maintain its meaning. Therefore, the experience of our work would produce the sensation of a recurring dream.
After 8 months of work by videoconference between Ecuador, the United States, and Spain, Helena wrote the corpus of the short film.
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Many of the talks on cinema that were generated on the academic side of the Orchid Festival, organized by Profesor Medardo Idrovo (producer), dealt with how to find a Latin American voice in film innovation projects. Narrative arcs and cinema consumption by current audiences were discussed. They spoke about the possibility of telling stories more attached to Latin American cultures, without having to reject other traditions or ignore the fact that our indigenous cultures were diluted by mixing with European ones.
The final story touches on the responsible use of information and communication technologies. The lives of the characters are linked by the creation, distribution, and validation of false information on the Internet. The story of the short film takes place in the underworld of Uku Pacha which, according to the beliefs of the Andean indigenous people, is a space-time where spirits travel and from where life emerges. Time in the Uku Pacha is considered to be more violent than at the Kay Pacha; several days in the underworld can be an instant in our reality. The characters experience the same journey over and over again trying to escape, just as it is described that the spirits in the Uku Pacha traveled seeking to cross to another space-time through caves, springs, and underground rivers.
Uku Pacha - Frames
Uku Pacha
Kay Pacha
Hanan Pacha
Most of the story takes place inside a van. This decision was based on current technical issues regarding virtual reality: if there is a lot of movement in the visual field, it is likely that the audience will experience nausea after 1 or 2 minutes. The solution was to provide an environment in slight movement (the Jubones Desert, in Ecuador) with a fixed visual structure (the van) that would serve as a visual "anchor".
Our proposal plays with the space-time rupture by approaching history from a 360-degree view and from a modular and fragmented structure. The viewer will have different experiences according to the number of trips he makes, always in relation to a changing totality. "Time, in the Andean worldview, is represented by the sacred and intertwined serpents: Yacumama and Sachamama. The first has the head implanted in the Uku Pacha and the other the head in the Hanan Pacha. In this way, the eternal oscillation of time is represented, which goes from a minimal, interior sphere, epicenter or Uku Pacha (from where the future emerges), towards a great, maximum or peripheral sphere, Hanan Pacha (where the past goes) that has the navel or stomach in the sphere that represents the present, that is, what our consciousness or Kay Pacha captures. The time traveler always walks looking to the past; that is why the act of creating time is an endless act, the oscillatory and concentric flow of the three Pachas or circles. In each change of cycle or PACHAKUTI radically new things are created."
Uku Pacha - Créditos
