Lateral

Lateral was part of IDFA program in 2023, and withdrawn by the filmmaker. Upon the request of the filmmaker, we publish the following text as received:

"This film was one of 12 to withdraw from participation at IDFA 2023, amongst 28 total withdrawals that included moderators, jury, and others in protest at the festival's damaging denunciation of an action in solidarity with Palestine that took place on the opening night of the festival. At the time, the festival erased all information relating to the films withdrawn in protest from the website. In response to the publication of the Palestine Film Institute's 'Industry Protocol in Times of Genocide' in August 2024, and as a gesture towards transparency, IDFA reinstated the information relating to the withdrawn films in September 2024. No further accountability has been taken.”  - The Palestine Film Institute on behalf of the filmmakers, for the full statement click here

Film Synopsis

In 3D film, the illusion of depth is created by using two cameras. When we view the resulting two layers, our brain resolves the two shots into a single image. Charlie Shackleton experiments with a way of achieving the same effect, but using just one camera—by duplicating the shot and layering it over the first with a very slight delay.

While scenes shot with a static camera shown with this method look slightly blurred, tracking shots—for which the camera moves from one side to the other—suddenly gain depth: one eye sees everything a fraction of a second later than the other, creating a stereoscopic effect. And the faster the camera moves, the stronger the illusion of depth.

In his VR lecture Lateral, Shackleton draws on feature films by Chantal Akerman, Andrej Tarkovski and others to examine the physical reality of seeing, and reveal a hidden layer in the medium. Physics has rarely been so thrilling.