Modular Cinematic Virtual Reality · 2021
An old van crosses the Andes. Three passengers carry a secret. You are the fourth — invisible.
Like the film, this page opens differently each visit.
An old van crosses the Andes. Three passengers carry a secret. You are the fourth — invisible.
Uku Pacha is a modular film that assembles a different cut of itself for every viewing — a live-action work in cinematic virtual reality. Made between 2012 and 2021 with Universidad de Cuenca in Ecuador, it is the fourth in a twenty-year exploration of modular cinema.
The official online version (4K).
The story was written so its scenes can be shuffled and still hold together.
An algorithm arranges those scenes — and the music — into a coherent cut of whatever length you choose.
Five openings, ten middle passages, three endings — combined by the length you request into roughly seven hundred coherent films.
No two viewings are the same. The more you watch, the more of the story you come to hold.
One version
Another version
Same scenes. Different order. A different film.
Live — the film's actual duration selector. Move the lever; the algorithm does the rest.
The fourth modular film: A Space of Time · 2003 → Accidental Occurrence · 2017 → Big Data · 2019 → Uku Pacha · 2021
Andean cosmology holds three worlds. Hanan Pacha is the world above. Kay Pacha is the world of the living. And Uku Pacha is the world below — the realm of spirits and the unconscious, where time runs slow: three days pass here while one day passes among the living.
The film unfolds entirely in Uku Pacha. The old van crossing the Andes is a moving threshold between the worlds — and its passengers do not yet know which one they are in.
An influential person has taken their own life after being the target of false information spread on social media — and someone believes the passengers are to blame. A journalist, a marketing executive, and a young influencer share the old van and the guilt. They have been summoned by the mysterious Mr. Owen into what feels like an endless journey. But this is Uku Pacha, and the road does not lead where roads usually lead.
You ride with them, unseen — the fourth passenger. Each time you watch, they remember it differently. Their destination is either acceptance, and passage to the world of the living, or endless wandering.
Selected by festivals worldwide · four awards.
Honorable mention
Humboldt International Film Festival · 2022 · deadCenter Film Festival · 2022
World premiere
Vancouver International Film Festival · 2021
Official selections
Ann Arbor Film Festival·Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival·Chelsea Film Festival·FIVARS — Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories·Demetera International Short Film Festival·Festival ECRA·AVANCA International Film Festival·Florida Film Festival·LA Latino International Film Festival·ALPINALE Short Film Festival·Inca Imperial International Film Festival·River Film Festival·The Fine Arts Film Festival·L’Intervalli Festival·The Chico Independent Film Festival
Beyond the festival circuit, the film has begun to draw serious written attention.
23.98 fps · Sociedad Mexicana de Autores de Fotografía Cinematográfica · 2024
A seven-page feature by Luis Enrique Galván and Milton R. Barrera, built around cinematographer Miguel Ortiz Ulloa. Its sharpest observation: in 360° the viewer inherits the frame — free to look anywhere — so authorship is handed over twice, once for where you look and once for which of the roughly seven hundred cuts you receive. With no off-camera space to hide a light in, the crew mapped the sun's path across the sky to time each scene. The article reads Uku Pacha as proof that virtual reality can carry a story rooted in a specific culture — Andean cosmology — and not only technological spectacle.
Ann Arbor Film Festival · 2022
Rose Albayat, who ran the headset presentation, drew the difference plainly: on a phone it is a film you watch; in the headset it becomes a place you enter — one that makes you hold your breath. The festival's own programme called the modular design a "clever generative approach."
Taught at UNAM · 2024
Héctor Perea groups Uku Pacha with A Space of Time and Accidental Occurrence as "multidimensional cinema" in a graduate seminar on literature at the margins of the other arts.