‘Traveling While Black’ is a cinematic VR experience that immerses the viewer in the long history of restriction of movement for black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in our communities.

Academy Award winner Roger Ross Williams and Emmy Award-winning Felix & Paul Studios’ film transports you to historic Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington DC. The viewer shares an intimate series of moments with several of the patrons of Ben’s as they reflect on their experiences of restricted movement and race relations in the U.S. 

Confronting the way we understand and talk about race in America, ‘Traveling While Black’ highlights the urgent need to not only remember the past but to learn from it, and facilitate a dialogue about the challenges minority travelers still face today.

AWARDS

PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS 2019 – NOMINATION: EXCEPTIONAL ORIGINAL INTERACTIVE PROGRAM

CANADIAN SCREEN AWARDS 2020 – WINNER: BEST IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE (NON-FICTION)

VR ARLES 2019 – WINNER

GRAND PRIZE FIPADOC 2020 – WINNER

SMART AWARD FOR DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DOCUMENTARY DIGITAL DOZEN AWARDS 2020 – WINNER

BREAKTHROUGHS IN STORYTELLING WEBBYS 2020 – WINNER

BEST DOCUMENTARY/IMMERSIVE AND MIXED REALITY VR DAYS 2019 – WINNER: HALO AWARD (NON-FICTION)

DIRECTOR: ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS

COOPERATION: FELIX LAJEUNESSE & PAUL RAPHAEL

Co-director: AYESHA NADARAJAH

PRODUCED BY: FELIX & PAUL STUDIOS

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: BONNIE NELSON SCHWARTZ, RYAN HORRIGAN & STEPHANE RITUIT

PRODUCERS: AYESHA NADARAJAH, JIHAN ROBINSON & LINA SRIVASTAVA

CINEMATIC VR TECHNOLOGY: FELIX&PAUL STUDIOS

FÉLIX LAJEUNESSE
Co-Founder & Creative Director, Felix & Paul Studios

A visionary creator with a keen eye for detail and sustained emotional focus, Félix Lajeunesse crafts immersive and interactive experiences that are rooted in connection: viewers feel deeply moved by the places and people they see and hear, and find themselves completely involved in the moment. Throughout his career, Félix has fused that sense of immediacy with a spirit of exploration to bring the creative possibilities of immersive entertainment to audiences through a variety of mediums that forge new frontiers in cinematic storytelling. Since co-founding Felix & Paul Studios in 2013, Félix has directed and co-directed most of the studio’s 30 immersive experiences to date. These include the EMMY Award–winning interactive feature The People’s House with President Barack Obama, the original VR fiction/feature experience Miyubi starring Jeff Goldblum, and the Space Explorers series in collaboration with NASA. Félix also shares his knowledge and expertise with a bold new generation of creators including Oscar-winning Director, Roger Ross Williams on Traveling While Black , NFB/Clyde Henry Productions on Gymnasia , and the team at TIME Studios on the latest season of Space Explorers entitled The ISS Experience. Whether leading the creative team at Felix & Paul Studios, directing or producing, Félix Lajeunesse continues to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling while charting a new course for presence-based, emotionally powerful artistic entertainment.

Paul Raphaël
Co-Founder / Creative Director / CTO Felix & Paul Studios

An immersive entertainment revolutionary, Paul Raphaël combines creative and technological innovation to explore ever-evolving forms of storytelling. The Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker, visual artist, director and studio head is known for his projects’ remarkable sense of presence and ingenuity. He’s enhanced how viewers consciously and personally connect with an experience, creating incredibly life-like, emotionally authentic worlds through the technologies of VR, AR and MR. In an over decade-long collaboration with his Felix & Paul Studios co-founder Félix Lajeunesse, he designed the camera technologies that brought the duo’s concepts to life. Together they created the first ever cinematic VR experience, Strangers with Patrick Watson — the project that launched Felix & Paul Studios in 2013. Since then, Paul has co-directed and overseen the creative direction of the studio’s over 30 projects, including the Emmy® Award-winning interactive feature The People’s House with former-President Barack Obama, original VR fiction-feature experience Miyubi, and documentary series Space Explorers in collaboration with NASA. He’s brought his expertise to recent co-productions with Oscar-winning Roger Ross Williams’ Traveling While Black, NFB and Oscar-nominated Clyde Henry Productions’ Gymnasia, and with TIME on the latest filming of Space Explorers aboard the International Space Station, using Felix & Paul Studios’ specialized cameras, on what has become the largest media project ever filmed in space. This content is also part of The Infinite, the world’s largest scale VR exhibit. Spurring the evolution of storytelling as an interactive experience, Paul works closely with expanded technical teams and creative partners to lead Felix & Paul Studios into an elevated future of immersive entertainment.