Guy Maddin is bring­ing a new aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty project to Lon­don Film Festival

Now only a month and change out, the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val has kicked its buzz-stok­ing into high gear with the announce­ment of yet anoth­er pro­gram­ming sec­tion, this time with a more nov­el purview. Now in its third year, the new­ly unveiled LFF Expand­ed strand will bring a menagerie of immer­sive art pieces to the BFI South­bank and oth­er venues, and they’ve got a known name lead­ing the charge this year.

Exper­i­men­tal­ist mad­man Guy Maddin is the head­lin­er, pre­mier­ing a new project titled ​“Haunt­ed Hotel — A Melo­dra­ma in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty” under the festival’s aegis. The offi­cial descrip­tion spec­i­fies that the piece takes the form of eight three-dimen­sion­al col­lages that will ​“rumi­nate on the man­i­fold per­mu­ta­tions of desire, decep­tion, and death.” If that sounds a bit stuffy for an artist who’s always cul­ti­vat­ed a light­heart­ed rela­tion­ship to his art­sy-fart­si­er ten­den­cies, just know that the upcom­ing mash-up indulges his trade­mark eclec­ti­cism, join­ing vin­tage nudie reels and film noir B‑picture into one big movie orgy Joe Dante would approve of.

The full slate col­lects twen­ty works orig­i­nat­ing from sev­en­teen coun­tries, the major­i­ty being co-pro­duc­tions with the UK. The press release empha­sizes the focus on press­ing issues in the new line­up, cast­ing new vir­tu­al- and aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty tech­nolo­gies as a mode of engag­ing with the world around us rather than cut­ting our­selves off from it.

Pol­ish-Cana­di­an copro­duc­tion The Choice places view­ers in the shoes of a young First Nations woman from Texas as she relates her expe­ri­ences with a med­ical­ly per­ilous preg­nan­cy she was forced to car­ry to term by anti-abor­tion leg­is­la­tion. Intra­vene uses ​“bin­au­r­al 360-degree sound” to place audi­ences in the mid­dle of Vancouver’s opi­oid over­dose cri­sis. On the Morn­ing You Wake relives one sur­re­al, apoc­a­lyp­tic day dur­ing which cit­i­zens of Hawaii received mis-sent notice that nuclear anni­hi­la­tion was imminent.

The var­ied array of for­mats and sub­jects are unit­ed by the prin­ci­ple that empa­thy can be gen­er­at­ed by phys­i­cal means, that putting a per­son in some­one else’s place will nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­ate a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship between them. The polit­i­cal­ly charged selec­tions for this year’s LFF Expand­ed sec­tion cer­tain­ly court their own hot-but­ton con­ver­sa­tions, but they’re all part of a wider ongo­ing debate over the util­i­ty and indus­try place­ment of new technologies.