I was at the 10th Motovun Film Festival, in Croatia two summers ago, mainly to see their ‘interactive cinema programme’. Motovun is renowned as a Woodstock of film festivals and often includes an interesting side programme. This year’s Motovun Film Festival began yesterday (26 July), with a side programme of Slovenian film, socially-committed topics tackling issues like human trafficking and rape, quirky “of people, cats and dogs”, and several homages to renowned directors.

When I attended the festival there were three screenings that handed over the director’s role to the audience; we were to decide the outcomes of these movies. The films screened were Czech ‘Kinoautomat’ “Man and His Home” (1966), Danish “Switching” (2003) and Canadian “Late Fragment” (2007).

Kinoautomat, the first interactive cinema and brain child of Czech director Radúz Činčera was invented in 1966. Alongside the movie projection, two moderators sitting at the stage were part of the spectacle. The first and only film made for Kinoautomat system was “Man and His Home” (‘Člověk a jeho dům‘) that contained within the storyline several moral dilemmas for the main character, Mr Novak. Each time Mr. Novak was in such a dilemma (9 times in the movie) the projection was paused and the moderators would come up to stage and present each side of the story to the audience. The audience was then asked to vote on what Mr Novak should do next; should he go after his angry wife or stay in the flat with his sexy neighbour wearing only a bath towel? In a special purpose-built cinema hall seats had red and green buttons people were to press to cast their vote. The movie would proceed however the majority of the audience voted.

The first screening of Kinoautomat took place in 1967 at the Czech pavilion at the World Expo ’67 in Montreal and was also screened at World Expo ’68 in San Antonio and in 1971 in one of the oldest cinemas in Prague, Kino Svetozor. The combination of demanding technical issues (to enable voting and parallel storylines, five different projectors had to be running at the same time and be switched between during the screening) and the communist regime that disliked the idea of people voting, even in cinema, meant that concept of Kinoautomat spent the next 40 years in obscurity. Then, in February 2006, Radúz Činčera’s daughter digitalized the film and brought it to the National Film Theatre in London where it thrilled the audience of 300 people who voted using devices resembling a remote control. Since then screenings have also been organised in Prague, in Kino Svetozor, as well as at various film festivals and the interactive DVD and a book about Kinoautomat are now also available.

“Man and His Home” is an example of a Czech New Wave film from the 1960s and was inspired by another innovative cinema concept that was born in Czech Republic in the late 1950s, the Magic Lantern (‘Laterna Magika’) . This was a blend of film, dance and theatre. Without words, it uses music, dance, light, pantomime and film. It was conceived by directors Alfred Radok and Josef Svoboda and premiered at the World Expo ’58 in Brussels, where it became an instant hit and was then also screened at Expos ’67 in Montreal and ’70 in Osaka. Laterna Magika is still a popular tourist attraction in Prague where it is regularly screened in the cinema built in 1959 that bears its name.

William Castle, popular for his unusual film promotions in the 1950s designed to draw TV audiences back to the cinema, also allowed the audience to vote in his film “Mr Sardonicus” (1961).  Audience members would receive a card with a thumb sticking out; depending on how they oriented the card this could be a thumb up or thumb down. At the end of the movie, they would get their say as to how the movie finishes. This was known as the Punishment Toll because, if they wished, audiences could decide to punish the nasty Mr Sardonicus.  From the IMDB: “Before the ending, Castle appeared on the screen and explained the poll. He then ‘counted’ the votes. If mercy won, then the happy ending would be shown. If did not prevail, the original ending would be shown. It is doubtful, though, that any audience voted for mercy.”

This was a far cry from the sophistication of Činčera’s Kinoautomat and a more recent Cinelabyrinth. Cinelabyrinth was promoted as “the world’s first labyrinth-style Cinematic System,” and was shown at Expo ’90 in Osaka. According to artist Michael Naimark, “Everyone began in a single large theatre sitting on the floor. At the front on each side of the screen was a door. After the first scene was played out, the audience was asked to chose one of two options by walking through one of the two doors. The story was an ecology yarn about kids trying to save a grand old tree from greedy developers. After seeing several scenes and making several choices, enough to totally lose one’s sense of direction inside the pavillion, one watches the final scene, where the children successfully save the tree. At the moment when the kids shout ‘we did it!’ the screen in front raises up to reveal a full-size replica of the tree used in the film. Simultaneously, three other screens on the other three sides of the tree rise up, revealing four theaters with everyone who began in the first room, now all facing each other. The gag was that no matter which options were chosen, the kids successfully saved the tree.”

More recent examples of interactive films include “Switching” (2003) and “Late Fragment” (2007).  As interesting as they are, these films are available only on DVD and are aimed at a single person or a couple so the classification of “democracy in cinema” can’t really apply. Also, in these latest examples, viewers don’t really get to choose what happens; by pressing the button they simply switch to another scene – not knowing what they’re going to get or why.  On the other hand, the interactivity feature could be used to provide powerful, if yet unexplored opportunities, even education, through film by allowing viewers to see how their choices affect their lives and the planet.

Another aspect of interactivity explored at 10th Motovun Film Festival was the introduction of scent in film.

The idea of synchronised smell has been toyed with from the early days of cinema.  In 1906, even before sound was introduced into cinema, a family theatre in Forest City, Pennsylvania used scents to accompany their news reel of the Pasadena Rose Bowl. They dipped cotton wool into rose essence and then used an electric fan to waft the scent towards the audience. Then in 1929 a cinema in Boston added a lilac fragrance to their ventilation system while the opening credits were rolling for “Lilac Time” and the same year at the premiere of “Broadway Melody,” a New York cinema released orange blossom fragrances from the ceiling during the screening. But these early experiments did more to distract audiences than add to the film experience.

Another effort to enhance the film experience was the idea of “feelies”, cinemas of the future envisaged by Aldous Huxley in his cult novel “Brave New World” (1932): alongside 3D vision and sound, these cinemas would offer the physical sensation of touch and movement (or ‘feely’ effect) and “synchronized scent-organ accompaniment”, all of which were intended to enhance the spectator’s immersion into the film by increasing the illusion of reality.

In the 1940s a Swiss scientist, Hans Laube, who studied “osmics”, the science of olfaction, developed a machine he called Scentavision. This was eventually picked up by a film producer, Mike Todd Jr., who re-named it Smell-o-Vision and used it for a film called “Scent of Mystery” in 1960. “First they moved (1895). Then they talked (1927)! Now they smell!” went the advertising slogan for Smell-o-Vision. The machine had a central “brain” with a rotating drum which housed the bottles of different scents. This was connected to the film tape which contained markers that would indicate when the scents were to be released. The scents would then travel through a system of plastic pipes until they reached the audience. The scents were released from under their seats. A similar contraption known as Aroma-Rama was invented by Charles Weiss: it released scents through the cinema’s ventilation system and was used in 1959 for the film”Behind the Great Wall” with over 30 scents. Aroma-Rama was advertised with the slogan, “You must breathe it to believe it.”

Neither of these technologies was embraced by audiences or critics. One New York Times film critic said, “If there is anything of a lasting value to be learned from Michael Todd’s ‘Scent of a Mystery’ it is that motion pictures and synthetic smells do not mix.” Time magazine similarly slammed Aroma-rama: “Most of the production’s 31 odours will probably seem phoney even to an average, uneducated nose. A beautiful old pine grove in Peking, for instance, smells rather like a subway restroom on a disinfectant day.” The main problems were that the scents, once released, would linger about and mix with other scents, causing unpleasant smells, allergic reactions and nausea for some people in the audience. The release of scents was also accompanied by a hissing sound which would distract from the movie, and in the case of Aroma-Rama, the scent took a while to diffuse (although freon gas was used to facilitate this diffusion) and would reach some people too late, when the appropriate moment in the movie had already passed. Although the media hype predicted scents to be as important as sound in cinema’s evolution, the first public appearance of “smellies” also marked their immediate demise. There is now some talk about revival of scent in film, TV (‘teleofaction’) and gaming, through digital scent technologies, but we have yet to see any of it reach wide acceptance.

Paying homage to Scent-o-Vision, John Waters used a system called Odorama in his 1981 film “Polyester,” with the ad slogan, “Smelling is believing!” In Odorama, the audience would receive scratch-and-sniff cards as they entered the cinema. The cards had 10 scents covered by 10 numbers and the audience would have to wait until a number would flash on the screen to scratch and sniff a scent related to that moment in the movie. The scents included pizza, leather, flowers, a skunk, natural gas and farts. The cards were printed with an emulsion of essential oils containing an aroma-forming chemical. The emulsion contains millions of tiny scent bubbles only microns in diameter. Once the cards are scratched, the bubbles rupture and release volatile scents that then find their way to people’s noses. Smell-o-Vision and Odorama have only been used in a handful of films since, including a 2006 screening of “The New World” with Colin Farrell in cinemas in Osaka and Tokyo, and several in amusement parks such as Disneyland.

The Odorama cards given out late at night for the midnight screening of “Polyester” (dubbed in German!) in Motovun were larger than I expected (size of a large block of chocolate) and they had to be shared with people sitting next to you (making them even more interactive). But just as Kinoautomat, the audience seemed to love it and engage wholeheartedly with it under the clear starry skies of Istria, old town wall of hill-top Motovun on one side and nighttime vistas of vineyard hills and valleys of central Istria on the other. And this is the magic of Motovun, that allows a cinephile to discover some of the most unusual and amazing cinematic achievements on warm summer nights in an historic, outdoor setting, among friendly people looking for quality that film experience.