The 2021 Sundance Film Festival soldiered on in the shadow of COVID-19 with newly appointed festival director Tabitha Jackson testing the limits of virtual event planning on the grandest scale. The hybrid socially-distanced in-person and virtual festival highlighted only 73 feature films, significantly less than its typical 120. However, smaller did not mean less inclusive, as participants came from more than 120 countries around the world and all 50 U.S. states—there were also 80 international journalists invited (an increase over 51 from the previous year) through the Press Inclusion Initiative, of which I was fortunate enough to be a part for a second year.
The immersive VR series 4 Feet High, by creators Maria Belen Poncio and Rosario Perazolo Masjoan, invites you into an Argentinian high school, alongside Juana (Marisol Agostina Irigoyen), a student who is disabled, as she and her peers fight for comprehensive sex education and sexual independence. From a wheelchair-level view, you can rotate 360 degrees to see reactions from characters or graphics floating in the sky, though the direction nudges your attention to the changing focal points. Each episode is less than ten minutes, which is more than enough due to the intensity of the VR experience. I noticed that the dissonance between my surroundings moving as I remained stationary created a bit of equilibrium disturbance, but it wasn’t enough to set me off of VR completely.
Despite the barriers to viewing their work, the small collective of trailblazing Black artists remain optimistic. Brewster says, “We don’t mind being pioneers. We don’t mind being the first in our community. Someone has to do it!” v
