At a time when the Sydney Opera House can be transformed into a giant snake by trick of light, when a simple App can let you make an action movie on your phone, and when special effects are taking over solid storylines at the cinema – it’s nice to take a step back in time to enjoy a more basic viewing experience.
Most of you will hazily remember ViewMasters from your childhood, those red private viewers that took you on an adventure with each click. Gasping at each slide, your friends would wait impatiently by, trying to grab the binocular-like toy to see what secret story lay inside. Now you have an opportunity to rediscover that low-tech joy at Vladmaster ViewMaster Experience – at the Sydney Film Festival Hub, Town Hall.
The Vladmaster ViewMaster evening offers a totally different experience to watching a film and as such is a big pull for the festival this year. Sure the seats are arranged in cinema style but that’s where the familiarity with a movie theatre ends. Enter the old-world hall and the sensory experience begins as you are greeted by an opulent chandelier hanging over dramatic drapes. Eerie, tinkling piano music plays in the air, transporting you back to a time when a device like the ViewMaster would have been ground-breaking in the entertainment world. (The Viewmaster technology was actually unveiled at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.)
On each seat lies a ViewMaster and three envelopes of reels containing weird and wonderful stories written and photographed by Portland-based artist Vladimir. Vladimir has been producing photo discs for screenings around the world since the early 2000s. These Vladmaster screenings take the usually solitary experience of the ViewMaster back to its early roots of being enjoyed by large crowds at once. It’s an odd sensation, spying into a dreamlike world, while in the background you hear the rhythmic sound of rows of people simultaneously clicking their ViewMasters at the soundtrack’s cue.
Ding. Clack: A Kafka-esque adventure of Stanley the cockroach who ventures out past the sticky side of the fridge floor.
Ding. Clack: A small man in a room with striped wallpaper and antlers and a typewriter, oh and there’s also there is a train chase.
DING. Clack: Jerimiah Barnes – an obsessive collector of earthmoving vehicles or a man in the wrong place at the wrong time…we’ll never know.
At the end of the experience you’re not quite sure what has happened, it’s like you’ve sat through an installation in an art museum. You’ve been transported to a surreal world, but in the simplest way.
It’s satisfying to have your mind blown without theatrics of complex technology, and I for one left with a smile on my face.
Niamh Byrne
@niamhwrites
Vladmaster Viewmaster Experience
Schedule
Saturday 7 June, 8-9pm
Wednesday 11 June, 8-9pm
Saturday 14 June, 6-7pm
Venue
Festival Hub (upstairs at Town Hall)
483 George Street, enter from Town Hall steps
