Queerskins Discussion
Virtual Reality Discussion
With Illya Szilak and Kim Voynar
Join director Illya Szilak, co-creator or Queerskins, and Kim Voynar of WonderTek Labs, and Artistic Director Richard Herskowitz as they discuss the making of Queerskins and the state of Virtual Reality in Cinema.
This is a free event. Please take the opportunity to view Queerskins after the presentation.
Queerskins: a love story, a virtual reality experience for Oculus Touch will be shown in a site-specific interactive installation in the Rice Media Center. Queerskins positions visitors, wearing Oculus headsets, in the backseat of a photo-realistic vintage 1986 Cadillac Sedan DeVille, behind two the two grieving parents, Ed (Drew Moore) and Mary-Helen (Hadley Boyd). They take a magic realist journey down a country road, a memory lane populated with scrapbook artifacts from their estranged son’s peripatetic life. Visitors are invited to become collaborators in the storytelling as, in the surrounding installation space, they uncover hidden memorabilia, some of which is recognizable from the virtual experience, open drawers, read Sebastian’s diary, write messages on a mirror in lipstick, and play records.
| Country, Year | United States, 2018 |
|---|---|
| Director | Ilya Szilak and Cyril Tsiboulski |
| Cast | Hadley Boyd, Drew Moore, Michael DeBartolo |
| Producer | Kathleen Fox |
| Language | English |
| Runtime | 15 MINS, 00 SECS |
| Genre | Virtual Reality |
| Subject | Virtual Reality |
| Event Type | Free Event, Panel |
Special Guests
Illya Szilak
Writer/director Illya Szilak and creative and technical director Cyril Tsiboulski, are known for their interactive multimedia online narratives such as www.queerskins.com which inspired Queerskins: a love story at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Szilak, who is trained as an infectious disease physician/HIV specialist and continues to practice part-time at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York City, based the Queerskins story on her experiences treating patients with HIV/AIDS.
Szilak’s longtime creative partner Cyril Tsiboulski is a partner and creative director at Cloudred, an interactive design studio in Brooklyn, New York. He earned an MFA at Parsons School of Design and a B.S. from the University of Cincinnati.
Kim Voynar
CEO and Chief “Imaginator” of WonderTek Labs (Seattle), a virtual reality content and consulting studio, Kim Voynar has extensive experience as a film critic, film festivals editor and frequent juror, panelist and moderator on the film festival circuit. She is the on-air co-host for The Daily Buzz, a public radio program and podcast that broadcasts from the Sundance Film Festival and SXSW. In 2015 she co-founded WonderTek Labs and began to focus on her own work as a visual artist. Her passions are experimenting on the edge where music, film, and art intersect with emerging tech and creating access, equity and opportunity for under-represented groups in the STEAM, VR and film industries.