Festival’s Story

At the beginning of 2014 we got an idea to organize, with the help of the company Nowatron Elektronik, a mini festival of the company Mirage IIID. Thank you Robert and Peter! Robin Sip, the founder of Mirage IIID, not only agreed with our idea, but he personally came to visit this festival. During one day there were about sixty visitors, who saw 6 shows.

And it was Robin Sip, who, travelling with us in a car, said, Why don’t you organize your own fulldome festival? Before we reached our destination, we set the basic rules of a new festival. No lectures, no workshops, only shows, shows and shows! Of course, it is not entirely true now, but fulldome shows for digital planetariums are really the priority of our festival. And we prefer shows with stories, which, hope not offending anyone, excludes experimental shows and school projects.

The first Central European Fulldome Festival Brno 2015 was held in April 2015. We must say we were surprised by the confidence a lot of big producers had in us – thank you very much, especially to those who personally came to the festival. Not more than two weeks after the Central European Fulldome Festival Brno 2015, we had a phone call from the International Planetarium Society and got an offer to organize the IPS Fulldome Festival Brno 2016. We did not hesitate a minute. The IPS Fulldome Festival Brno 2016 was held from 15 to 17 June, 2016 and the competition part of the festival included shows from producers from over 15 countries. The next festivals grew in numbers, both for participants and for shows. The Fulldome Festival Brno 2019 had the most visitors so far and it was sold out. In total 189 visitors came to see 49 amazing shows.

The Fulldome Festival Brno has only one aim. It is to connect the producers of amazing shows for digital planetariums with the operators of such planetariums. We do not have to organize any lectures or workshops and we do not need to move the limits of this technology further on. The others at the other festivals do it better than us. And we would like to thank them for that.

In Brno Observatory and Planetarium, we just love audiovisual technology of digital planetariums. The festival is a sort of a harvest feast with the last year’s crop. It is the celebration of all skilful creators and all planetarium operators, who, not always working in easy conditions, support people’s interest in stars… and actually in the whole universe.