PRISON X
Set in Bolivia’s infamous San Sebastian jail, Prison X is an interactive arcade role-play documentary, hand-painted in VR. Heavy doors open up and suck you in as a world of Neo-Andean magical realism swirls around you and where you have to keep the devil drunk to survive inside the prison.
The overall story follows the myth of the devil who you have to get drunk so she forgets to steal your soul. The story takes place inside the prison, but the experience coexists in a parallel reality, where magical situations come to life as a matter-of-fact.
Prison X presents a different way to experience the world, pushing the form of story by mixing the oldest Quechua tradition of oral storytelling with physical game play and an immersive world hand-painted inside VR. To accompany the VR experience, we are also creating a photographic exhibition, a live performance and Diablita, an animatronics robot puppet with the ability to interact with an audience and its surroundings through artificial vision.
We’re a core team of female creators, who believe it is essential to imagine our future, represent our present and look back at our past from our own Neo Andean perspective, where dreams, myths and dark tales co-exist with our modern world.
THE TEAM
Violeta Ayala, director
Biography
Violeta Ayala is a Quechua film director, producer, writer and artist. She is best known for directing the award winning documentaries COCAINE PRISON (2017), THE FIGHT (2017), THE BOLIVIAN CASE (2015) and STOLEN (2009). Her films have premiered at A-List film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and screened in hundreds of festivals worldwide. Violeta has won 42 awards, including a Walkley and nominations for the prestigious IDA in Los Angeles and Rory Peck Awards in London. She has a degree in Journalism from Charles Sturt University in Australia and is part of a prominent blogger series on the Huffington Post. In 2018, Violeta won the Jaime Escalante medal of honor for her outstanding talent in filmmaking. She is a founding member of United Notions Film.
Dan Fallshaw, Producer
Biography
Dan Fallshaw is a Walkley Award winning filmmaker, who makes films to shift the balance of power. Fallshaw’s credits include BETWEEN THE OIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA (2006) a documentary about corruption in the oil industry, the controversial and multi-award winning STOLEN (2009), COCAINE PRISON (2017) that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, THE FIGHT (2017) published by The Guardian for which Fallshaw won a Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent to the Pulitzer), THE BOLIVIAN CASE that premiered at Hot Docs and was nominated for Premios Platino and Premios Fenix. Dan has an Honours degree in Visual Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney and Saint Martin’s College in London.
Camila Claros, Programmer
Biography
Camila teaches programming and robotics at the UNAB in Santiago, Chile. In 2016 and 2018 she won the Nasa Space Apps Challenge and in 2017 she won the People’s Choice Award. She was featured at the Global Game Jam Hackathon 2016. Camila is from Cochabamba and has been programming since she was 10.
Olivia Barron, Programmer
Biography
Olivia Barron is a Bolivian/Swedish visual artist. Her family was exiled from Bolivia during the 80’s dictatorship. She grew up in Lund, Sweden and then spent five years in Nicaragua. Olivia studied Interior and Product design at the Accademia Italiana in Florence, Architecture at the UPB (Universidad Privada Boliviana) and Fashion Design at the Art Institute in California. Olivia is hand painting PRISON X inside VR. She will be working on CHOLITA SUNRISE, a new stopmotion film by Alexander Juhasz.