Although they’ve been around for years, dome films are making a comeback. Known for cutting-edge programming, the Fort Myers Film Festival is joining this trend. Director Eric Raddatz has recently announced the film festival’s collaboration with Calusa Nature Center & Planetarium and is preparing to issue a call for dome film submissions.
“The Calusa Planetarium, people don’t realize, is the only planetarium within a 90-mile radius, and they have the potential to do dome movies,” said Raddatz. “And we do, and I say ‘we’ because I’m the executive director of the Calusa Nature Center, as well. This is going to be a chance where we’re about to announce that the Fort Myers Film Festival is going to be taking submissions for dome films so we can play independent dome films at the Calusa Nature Center for our 2025 year at the Fort Myers Film Festival.”
Dome films have been described as the pinnacle of immersive storytelling. Utilizing 360-degree cinematography, the video and sound go all the way around viewers in every direction, so it’s as close to being at the actual location as you can come.
“What you have with a dome film is just that it’s eight times the experience,” said Raddatz. “If anyone’s been to IMAX or a planetarium show, you’re seeing a full 180 dome.”
Among the dome films making waves right now is one featuring the Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron, and “Butterfly Journey,” “Coral Sea: A Turtle Tale” and “Sounds of the Ocean.”
“When you think of dome films that succeed, sometimes they’re very graphic heavy,” Raddatz noted. “I know in our planetarium, a lot of our shows, we’re showing the universe, we’re showing planets and we’re showing stars, and we’re showing the Earth, and we’re showing up close macro pictures of creatures, because creatures are a big deal. But it could be a documentary. It could be something that lends itself to maybe less graphic capacity, but most people who know they’re going to play in a dome are thinking we’re going to up our graphical game.”
Of course, what the film festival screens depends on the submissions it receives. But whatever form they take, Raddatz expects them to be groundbreaking.
“We get a sense that we’re going to be coming up with something different and unique that no one else is really doing, and we like the thought of the opportunity to pioneer it,” said Raddatz.
The Fort Myers Film Festival will take place at multiple locations around Lee County May 14 to 18.
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“Someday, in the not too distant future,” said Steven Spielberg in 2006, “you’ll be able to go to a movie and the movie will be all around you. The movie will be over your head, it will be 360 degrees around you.”
That day has come.
While Fort Myers Film Festival will include dome films beginning in 2025, it will retain its focus on traditional 2D normal screen features, documentaries and short films.
The Fort Myers Film Festival joins several film festivals nationwide that include dome films in their programming. One is the DTLA Film Festival, which screened dome films at no less than five large dome theaters in the L.A. area. The biggest was 90 feet in diameter and held 500 people.
“In The DTLA Film Festival’s dome film series — the first-ever in Los Angeles — they selected the best films across the globe with a focus on narrative storytelling,” wrote Steve Taylor in 2019 for “Entertainment Today.” “The series included several Dome Film World Premieres of narrative features from internationally known filmmakers including Randal Kleiser, Lena Herzog, Robot Koch, Darcelle XV, Jacob Collier, as well the first feature-length dome-film documentary to be released in the U.S.”
One festival devoted entirely to dome films is Dome Fest West, which celebrates full-dome films and immersive media. Most of the films screened by Dome Fest West in 2024 were the very high-graphic films that Raddatz referenced above, including “Sonic Visions: A Journey Through Sound and Sight,” “Cosmic Frontiers: An Interstellar Journey” and “Quantum Realities: A Cinematic Exploration of the Surreal.”
The Fort Myers Film Festival is an intelligent independent filmmaker's preferred event to create, unite and showcase the finest artistic cinematic works.
Spotlight on the Arts for WGCU is funded by Naomi Bloom.