Initially, virtual reality experience was just for games and cheap thrills. But moving forward, it has come to more places. Some creators have used the medium to start telling dialog and even telling stories.
The VR exhibition CARNE y ARENA (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who is also known for directing Birdman and The Revenant, has created various museums worldwide to explore "the human condition of immigrants and refugees."
The cinema experience is an emotional and physically immersive venture into the world of migrants crossing the desert of the American southwest. It also connects viewers to the hot-button political and social realities of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Iñárritu said that he met and interviewed Central American and Mexican refugees while researching the project, adding that "Their life stories haunted me." He said he wanted the visitor "to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants' feet, under their skin, and into their hearts."
And here, CARNE y ARENA gives viewers a way to live through even a small part of an immigrant's journey. The VR experience was based on true immigrants' accounts with vast spaces, sand-covered floors and cold waiting rooms. This makes the six-and-a-half-minute VR sequence an immersive experience.
Iñárritu's CARNE y ARENA that was created in collaboration with Emmanuel Lubezki, the Birdman helmer’s longtime collaborative director of photographer, is getting the first Oscar award ever granted to a VR experience "in recognition of a visionary and powerful experience in storytelling."
While the 90th Oscars is months away, and it doesn't have the proper category for CARNE y ARENA, the Academy has already handed out its first statuette of the season.
But this doesn't make Iñárritu's win any less important, since he is getting a special statuette for his work. As Polygon noted, the last time the Academy gave out a special Oscar was back in the 1990s for John Lasseter's Toy Story 1. It was a special award, but it paved a way for the Academy to establish the Best Animated Feature category a few years later.
