The Computational Media Innovation Centre (CMIC) hosted a talk about the work of Gabo Arora, a visiting VR filmmaker on 21th May 2019.

After the talk, CMIC students had a chance to show their research demos and get valuable comments from Gabo and his team.

Gabo Arora:
Heralded by the LA times as "game-changing" and "transcending all the typical barriers of rectangular cinema", Gabo Arora's widely acclaimed virtual reality documentaries have all premiered as official selections at major film festivals around the world. Gabo is an award-winning immersive artist, filmmaker and Founder/Creative Director of LightShed, a storytelling, technology and research studio collaborating with the industry’s leading creative pioneers and entrepreneurs focused exclusively on emerging technologies currently known as VR, AR and AI. He is also a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he designed, leads and is the Founding Director of the new Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies (ISET) program and lab. Formerly, he was a Senior Economic Policy Advisor for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; a UN diplomat with extensive field experience in disaster and conflict zones; and the United Nations' first-ever Creative Director where he founded UNVR - a division of the UN focused on virtual reality initiatives and campaigns.

His VR film Clouds Over Sidra, in partnership with UNICEF, continues to double direct to consumer fundraising contributions from 1:12 to 1:6. Sidra is distributed in 40 countries in 15 different languages and is the most widely distributed and viewed social impact VR film globally.

A native New Yorker, Gabo also holds honors degrees with distinction from NYU and Johns Hopkins University. His mother tongue is Punjabi, he is fluent in Hindi/Urdu, French, Italian and Spanish. He is a Davos World Economic Forum Arts and Cultural leader and was nominated for a term-membership at the Council on Foreign Relations by Francis Fukuyama. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, nominated for an Emmy, awarded a Cannes Lions, a Sheffield Doc/Fest award for best documentary, a Lumière Award, two Webbys, and has  been featured in the New Yorker and the BBC world service.