Director's Bio-Filmography:
Benoit Felici is a French-Italian filmmaker graduated from the ZeLIG film school in Italy.
His previous film “Unfinished Italy” was a journey into the remains of incomplete buildings and infrastructure, scattered throughout rural Italy, and which had turned into ruins. The film received 15 international awards (Documenta Madrid, Premiers Plans d’Angers) and was screened widely in the international film festivals circuit.
In THE REAL THING, Benoit follows the path that led him to "Unfinished Italy" and brings his reflection to a new focus: the world’s architectural replicas, the reality of life in fake surroundings.
In 2013 Benoit Felici received the Foundation Lagardère’s Excellence Grant as a documentary author.
Mathias CHELEBOURG
Intuitively attracted by technical challenges and the engaging opportunities offered by emerging new mediums Mathias likes to work closely with technicians from a wild variety of disciplines (From camera engineering, computer graphic development, video gaming or theater scenography.) and strive toward a convergence; the "Building of new non traditional ways to tell stories and advertise in the upcoming immersive area".
At an incredibly young age he has already seduced prestigious clients like Prada, Dior, Hermes, Chanel, Nike, Microsoft, Renault, Venturi...)
His web documentary about the worldwilde "eGaming competition scene" in collaboration with Redbull has drawn the attention of billions of viewers online. His approach on life style filming gave birth to inspiring and provocativemusic videos conceived as creative sandboxes for his experimentations. Variations, his original art installation commissioned by Premiere Heure Group successfully called attention to the potential of Virtual Reality at a pioneer stage.
Since the past few years he is passionate about exploring the narrative potential of immersive cutting- edge technologies in the field of virtual and augmented realities, interactive storytelling and theatrical hybrid installations.
In 2016, he was called to design challenging innovative VR films fora variety of brands transcending technical limitations and pushing the grammar and ambitions of the format, project after project.
In 2017 he designed and directed Alice, The VR play, the free adaptation of Lewis Carol master piece mixing live comedian motion capture and an array of physical interactions inside a VR space premiered in the official selection of Venice Film Festival and raised curiosity among the industry. Quickly earning the reputation to be one of the most complete VR experience up to date by elegantly blending the edge between theater interpretation, animated film and theme park entertainment. The experience is still touring around the world and has been showcased in a variety of exciting milestones among which are the Phi Center in Montreal, New York’s Future of Story Telling or Dubai International Film Festival. Winning the digital award at Geneva International Film Festival on the way.
Mathias is currently focusing his attention on the development of exciting animated projects pushing further the notion of social VR and multi viewers’ experiences in large scale applications.
Director's / Curator's Statement:
THE REAL THING is a VR journey into a copy of our world, exploring real-life stories
inside China‘s replicas of Paris, Venice and London.