Screen Australia funds first VR film

Screen Australia is providing production funding for Storm Rider, a virtual reality (VR) film   following artist Shaun Gladwell’s quest to teach a young British Muslim woman how to skateboard.

Pubcaster SBS ordered the 15-minute documentary – the first VR project backed by funding agency Screen Australia – from producer Leo Faber.

Faber and Gladwell’s VR film Orbital Vanitas, a sci-fi mystery and meditation on death, will premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibition.

Storm Rider is among seven factual projects that are receiving A$1.6m (US$1.2m) in funding from Screen Australia’s documentary producer and commissioned programmes.

Bunya Treehouse Productions will produce the feature doc Sanctuary, an examination of current global refugee policies from the viewpoint of a young Iraqi man whose harrowing life has taken him to the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia and back again.

Producer, writer and director Niall Doran’s natural history doc Sixteen Legs, which looks at Australia’s giant prehistoric spiders, is a feature-length extension of his critically acclaimed short of the same name.

The film has secured festival screenings in Santa Barbara and Washington DC, after which it will air as a two-parter on French broadcaster Arte.

The slate includes four previously announced projects: Chemical Media’s You See Monsters for ABC Arts; Princess Pictures’ My Year 7 Life (ABC Me); and two feature docs, Genepool Productions’ Vitamania – The Sense and Nonsense of Vitamins and Supplements, and I Used To Be Normal – A Boyband Fangirl Story from producer Rita Walsh and emerging filmmaker Jessica Leski.

Liz Stevens, senior manager of documentary at Screen Australia, said: “Funding such a broad range of projects from both established and emerging talent points to a promising future for our local documentary industry.

Australians are passionate documentarians and we are confident these projects will offer Australian and international audiences important, entertaining insights into our world.