“1968,” a new XR work from award-winning Director and Animator Rose Bond will have its WORLD PREMIERE, in competition at the 82 nd Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday, August 27, 2025. This follows
the success of Bond’s previous work “Earths to Come,” which exhibited as part of the Biennale College program last year.
“1968 “is ‘communal VR theatre’ that explores the transformative power of protest through allusions to 1968, a year charged with societal, political and cultural unrest . The work interweaves narrative strands in search
of those international interstices of history, power and human connection that become particularly resonant during times of major socio-cultural upheaval.
Musical Collaboration and Visual Narrative Bond’s hand-drawn animations were originally commissioned by the Oregon Symphony to accompany
Luciano Berio’s acclaimed Sinfonia—itself shaped by the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King. When
COVID shut down the original production on opening day, the animated work sat in limbo for years. Bond
has now re-envisioned these drawings as 1968, pairing them with composer inti figgis-vizueta ‘s “Seven Sides
of Fire,” performed by Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet backed by the American Composers
Orchestra. The expansive range of this work pairs with Bond’s non-linear visual narrative inspired by still
photographs from 1968. This combination opens the work to interpretation—a conjuring that is both poetic
and articulate, emotionally grounded yet unbound.
The penciled animation, enhanced by the artful compositing of Zak Margolis, evokes a sense of the deeply
personal within a medium that can otherwise feel distant. In its natural state, sound is omni-dimensional,
and in this immersive form, the hand-drawn animation breaks from the flat screen into dimensional
cinematic space.
Venice Installation
For the 82nd Venice Film Festival, the creators have designed a hybrid sound-sight dome installation. At
PASE, our partner sound & research studio in Venice, Massimiliano Borghesi spatially mixed inti’s recorded
tracks. Sounds emanate from different places, at different times and at different volumes, enveloping and
embracing the audience seated inside the dome.
“1968” reflects on the past, to ask us to reflect on the future, now.
