Washington and Lee premiered artist and filmmaker Craig Quintero’s extended reality films in the IQ Center on Sept. 25 and 26. 

Viewers watch Quintero’s films through a virtual reality headset, which allows them a 360-degree range of vision while the film unfolds. The screened films are a part of Quintero’s “Just For You” trilogy, which is comprised of the titles “All That Remains” (2022), “Over the Rainbow” (2023) and “A Simple Silence” (2024).

Quintero is the founder and artistic director of Riverbed Theatre Company in Taipei, Taiwan, and a professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at Grinnell College. He has received numerous awards, including the Best Immersive Experience Award at the 2023 Luxembourg Film Festival for “All That Remains” and the Panorama Award at the 2023 Festival du Nouveau Cinema for “Over the Rainbow.” Quintero has presented his films at the Venice Film Festival, South by Southwest and the Taiwan International Festival of Arts. In addition to film, Quintero creates sculptures and art installations.

Quintero also gave an artist talk in Stackhouse Theater on Sept. 26, where attendees had the opportunity to learn more about his films.  Quintero said the actors use  intimate eye contact and engagement with the viewer to make them feel like the experience was made just for them. 

“What’s interesting about the films is that it offers you a glimpse of something that you’ve never experienced before,” said Nich Perez, a journalism professor and the DeLaney Filmmaker-in-Residence at Washington and Lee.  It’s an open-to-interpretation kind of experience.” 

In his artist talk, Quintero said one of his main goals is to push the question of “what if?” and ask the viewer to think about what exists beyond their everyday reality.  

“The VR experience was very unsettling but also very intriguing at the same time,” Hadley Harbison, ’27, said. 

Quintero said he was inspired by works like Richard Kelly’s psychological thriller film “Donnie Darko.” He said he recalled watching the film in college and feeling like it shifted his reality in a way that he’d never experienced. Quintero said other artists, such as surrealist painter René Magritte, have influenced him to defamiliarize the familiar and blur the lines between the expected and unexpected in his work.

“I think that maybe pushing beyond the everyday, through this journey, when we come back to reality we can see it in a new and different light. So it’s not to escape reality, but it’s to leave it, and be able to get a different perspective on it for when you return.” Quintero said.

Quintero’s new expanded reality film, “Blur,” recently premiered in Taiwan and appeared at the Venice Film Festival this summer. “Blur” considers the definitions of the terms “cloning” and “resurrection biology” in relation to real scientific discoveries and what they mean for humanity.

“I think very little in life asks us to see ourselves or to ‘know thyself.’ And I think that virtual reality, because it’s such an immersive experience, is really effective to encourage this self-reflection,” Quintero said.