Program overview | OUR SCREENS

Topic | OUR SCREENS

Video game worlds in film

Somewhere behind the screens lies a land, an island, an illusion. Its inhabitants are gamers, avatars, survivors, armed people. In OUR SCREENS, we are showing a two-day compilation of a short film programme and a feature-length film that take video game worlds as a starting and pivotal point and deconstruct them in order to create new chamber plays for film scenarios. With our selection of films, we want to sound out the points where gameplay and film art overlap, where they fertilise, decompose or repel each other.

In a short film programme, we are bringing together six films from the years 2012-2024, which – inspired by the diversity of video game technology – show a spectrum ranging from media art experiments to essay films and machinimas. The genre term machinima is a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema”. It is a film technique in which real-time recordings in video games are used as material for film productions. Machinimas originated in the 1990s and still function today as an inexhaustible playground for reflecting on and exploring the digital worlds into which we are constantly advancing. The feature-length film KNIT’S ISLAND from 2023 follows the principle of machinima. In the in-game documentary, we see the long-term observation of a trio of filmmakers in the online survival game DayZ. As avatars themselves, they hold conversations with gamers and try to get to the people behind the game characters.

Filmmakers help themselves to the virtual bouquet of possibilities that they find in video game worlds and take on new roles in the process. They shoot films during the gameplay, are part of the gameplay or turn us into participants in the gameplay. They draw on the resources of the games industry, which are available to them as found footage, toolbox and material pit. In their new cinematic creations, they deconstruct open worlds, upcycle storylines and create new film protagonists. They grab bugs and ride on glitches. The first-person shooter appears as a POV shot. Avatars are simulated anew in virtual puppetry and seem to come into being and break up again at the moment the camera, the screen recording, is running and we see the film. In this way, the filmmakers build and test digital models of the future from current desires, fantasies and fears of our society. Acting out video games. Restaging virtuality.