From Wednesday June 5 to Friday June 7 the Brno Observatory and Planetarium held the fifth festival of the latest educational shows for digital planetariums. This time in red and blue, anaglyph 3D rhythm.

• The Fulldome Festival Brno 2019 received 66 movie submissions from 21 countries of the world (Australia, Czech Republic, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Island, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Holland, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Russian Federation, Greece, United States of America, Spain, Ukraine and Great Britain).
• Finally, there were 49 shows screened with a total length of 1,212 minutes (which is 20 hours and 12 minutes).
• The shortest movie was 5 minutes and the longest was 53 minutes long.
• They all took up 29TB on the hard discs of the Brno Planetarium.
• For the first time, the festival introduced a 3D section which included 15 shows.
• There were 189 visitors in the audience (two-thirds of them were planetarians from all over the world)
• The festival awarded 4 prizes: International Jury Awards (Best Movie and Best 3D Movie), Audience Award and Brno Observatory and Planetarium Director’s Award.
• For the first time, a series of amazing lectures given by the IMERSA was held before the festival. Thanks for them!
• The festival visitors drank 1560 cups of coffee, 420 bottles of Moravian wine, 520 litres of water… they ate 2,220 meals and used 4,150 plates.

The very special guests of the Fulldome Festival Brno 2019 included, for example, an astrophotographer Kwan O Chul from South Korea, Björn Vorr from Holland, Victoria Rubinstein from Argentina, Thomas Krauppe from Hamburg, Dan Neafus and Michael Daut from the United States, Kai Santavuori from Finland, Margus Aru from Estonia and Pavel Nikiforov z Irkutsk.

Audience Award

Voyager: Never Ending Journey
Director: Yuri Gapon, Producer: UMA Vision
The festival visitors handed in exactly 931 voting cards giving each festival show from 0 to 5 points. The show Voyager: Never Ending Journey received the highest score of 4.47 points. The other movies with the highest scores were:

• Polaris: The Space Submarine and the Mystery of the Polar Night
• Birth of Planet Earth
• Capcom GO! The Apollo Story
• Space Tour
• Khrumka and the Magic Rocket

The Brno Observatory and Planetarium is going to put on the show Voyager: Never Ending Journey in December 2019.

Brno Observatory and Planetarium Director’s Award

Birth of Planet Earth
Director: Thomas Lucas, Producer: Spitz Creative Media, NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Lab., Thomas Lukas Productions and Telus Science Museum

The Brno Observatory and Planetarium is going to put on the show in autumn 2019.

Best 3D Movie

CAPCOM GO! - The Apollo Story
Director: Max Crow, Producer: NSC Creative
The Brno Observatory and Planetarium is going to put on the movie Capcom. GO! in July 2019.

Reasons: For a truly immersive 3D experience, with the understanding both the possibilities and the limitations of the Fulldome 3D Technology.  This program helped us feel the emotions of the historical event.

Best 2D Movie

EXO: Are We Alone
Director: Sebastien Gauthier, Producer: Planetarium Rio Tinto Alcan and Espace pour la vie

Reasons: For an emotional and inspiring journey in the search for exoplanets and life.

The best 3D movie and best 2D movie were selected by an international jury comprising of:

• Kimura Kaoru, President Elected of International Planetarium Society, an astronomer of the Science Museum in Japan and a specialist in the history of science connecting art and science since 1987.
• Shawn Laatsch, a planetarian since 1984 who opened the first 3D planetarium in the world in Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hawaii and worked at the Mauna Kea Observatories and an author of a very successful show Two Small Pieces of Glass played in about five hundred planetariums.
• Maciej Mucha, an independent fulldome professional from Warsaw, Poland, a founder of a portal www.plafinder.com and an executive producer of the show Hello Earth, who worked as Chief Technician and Deputy Director of Heavens of Copernicus Planetarium until 2017.

The jury also decided to highlight the following movies:

Sphere and American West 8K
For calm, meditation experiences with beautiful visuals.

The Factory
For an inspirational story that was very unexpected and different than astronomical content.

The Gardener of the galaxy
For an interesting concept merging animation with real imagery.

The professional Fulldome Festival Brno and the following public DigiFest are part of the STAROBRNO IGNIS BRUNENSIS firework festival. The general partner is the company RSA Cosmos.

The festival partners are the companies Mirage3D, GOTO, mapcards.net, Metaspace, Nowatron Elektronik, Reef Distribution, Render Area, Sky-Skan, Softmachine and Spitz.

The festival was organized under the auspices of Markéta Vaňková, Mayor of Statutory City of Brno and Bohumil Šimek, Governor of South Moravian Region.

The festival was financially supported by the statutory city of Brno.

The festival is further supported by the International Planetarium Society, the IMERSA and the marketing and destination company SNIP & Co. The Fulldome Festival Brno and DigiFest are part of the project South Moravian Region Supports Science.