ERASURE at SAHARA Las VegasThe first-ever OPTIX LIVE brought creators and industry leaders together at SAHARA Las Vegas for an exclusive VIP event where guests got a special preview of ERASURE by Lluvia Giacoman, winner of the OPTIX Vertical Vision Micro Filmmaking Challenge.
The event marked the beginning of OPTIX LIVE, a new invitation-only monthly gathering presented as “the film industry’s inner circle.” Hosted at SAHARA Las Vegas, the series is designed to create a smaller, more focused setting for the people working across film, television, media, technology, finance, hospitality, and entertainment to meet in person, see new work, and make useful industry connections.
For the first event, the focus was ERASURE and filmmaker Lluvia Giacoman.
Giacoman earned the Grand Prize and OPTIX Visionary Award at the inaugural OPTIX Vertical Vision Micro Filmmaking Challenge for ERASURE. The competition, presented by the Future of Film Association, challenged Nevada filmmakers and students to create films specifically for the 9:16 vertical screen. Entries could be no longer than 90 seconds, and the challenge included a $10,000 total prize pool across its award categories. OPTIX described ERASURE as a standout project that pushed the format forward and demonstrated what vertical cinema could become.
That made ERASURE a fitting project for the first OPTIX LIVE. Rather than ending with an award, the event gave Giacoman and her work another opportunity to be seen by people working throughout the entertainment industry.
Guests at SAHARA Las Vegas were given an early look at the project while spending the evening with other filmmakers, creators, executives, and industry professionals. Food and drinks were served throughout the event, with time built around the screening for guests to meet, talk, and make introductions.
That format is central to what OPTIX LIVE is intended to be.
Rather than a large public networking event, OPTIX LIVE is built around a limited, invitation-only guest list. The broader series is intended to include private screenings and sneak previews, creator and project showcases, strategic introductions, industry conversations, and opportunities for people on different sides of the entertainment business to meet directly. The guest community spans producers, directors, writers, actors, investors, studio executives, production companies, content creators, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, attorneys, hospitality executives, and others working in and around entertainment.
The idea is simple: the right introduction can change everything.
For filmmakers, that could mean meeting a producer, financier, distributor, collaborator, or company that can help move a project forward. For executives and investors, it creates an opportunity to discover new creators and projects in a setting where the room has been intentionally put together. As OPTIX puts it: if you create, produce, finance, or distribute, you need to be in this room.
The first OPTIX LIVE also continued work that began with the Vertical Vision Micro Filmmaking Challenge.
Held in December 2025, the challenge was created around a format that has become impossible for the entertainment industry to ignore: vertical video. Rather than treating 9:16 filmmaking as simply a social-media version of traditional film, the competition asked filmmakers to tell complete, cinematic stories specifically for the screen most people carry with them every day. ERASURE emerged as the Grand Prize winner from that competition.
The project is now being presented as an original vertical sci-fi/drama series, ERASURE 2197. Its current project site describes a future in which humanity’s history has been deliberately erased and memory itself has become dangerous. The series is currently listed as coming soon. Some of the story material on the project site is identified as preliminary and subject to producer approval, so further details are still to come.
That progression—from a filmmaker entering a local challenge, to winning the competition, to having the project presented to an invited industry audience at SAHARA Las Vegas—is also an example of what OPTIX is trying to build in Las Vegas: not simply individual events, but a place where creators and projects can continue moving forward after an event ends.
OPTIX LIVE is part of a broader effort by OPTIX and the Future of Film Association to grow an entertainment community in Las Vegas and create more opportunities for filmmakers, producers, investors, companies, and other industry professionals to connect locally. OPTIX describes the mission of LIVE as building a community where introductions can become collaborations and relationships can ultimately become projects.
The first gathering offered an early look at what that can mean in practice: a private room, a new project on screen, the filmmaker behind it in attendance, and an audience made up of people who could potentially play a role in what happens next.
And this was only the first OPTIX LIVE.
The series will continue with private previews, screenings, industry conversations, project showcases, and other invitation-only gatherings at SAHARA Las Vegas, with attendance intentionally limited from event to event.
