“We Need to Strive for a Better, More Inclusive, Emerging Tech Landscape”: Paisley Smith on her VR Project Homestay and Advocating for Women in VR/AR

For the past eight years London’s Open City Documentary Festival has been dedicated to “celebrating the art of non-fiction,” and the upcoming 2018 edition (September 4-9) looks to be doing so in a creatively cutting edge way when it comes to immersive media. In addition to a wide-ranging Expanded Realities exhibition (divided into three themed sections, A New Lens, Motion and Sonic), OCDF will present a full day (September 7) Expanded Realities symposium featuring deep-thinking speakers tackling some of the most pressing issues affecting new media-makers today. One discussion I’m especially looking forward to is the “Barrier to Entry: Accessibility in XR” talk, which will focus on the “big questions of who gets to tell the stories, who gets to experience them and what the industry can do to break down barriers and allow more diverse voices to inform the future of digital storytelling.”

And one of the artists I’m most looking forward to hearing from on that panel is Paisley Smith, a Fulbright scholar who nabbed the Sundance Institute and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship just this year. Filmmaker caught up with the Canadian filmmaker for a sneak peek of her talk and to discuss her latest VR project Homestay, her life as a binational media-maker and her work advocating for women in the emerging tech world.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.