FUTURE ARTISTS REVIEWS: INDIE GAME-THE MOVIE
by AshaTUESDAY 28th AUGUST, 7pm. TICKETS: http://indiegameblacklion.eventbrite.com/
The Black Lion is proud to be hosting a very special film from Canada (isn’t that where most of our cultural bastions seem to come from these days?).
Indie Game: The Movie is the first ever foray by a documentary film into the somewhat cliquey and strangely-hidden world of indpenedent game design. Sounds obscure – but it’s a film that will appeal to anyone who’s had an idea that they’ve seen through from start to finish, and just how heartbreaking that can be sometimes.
A documentary that’s now cult across the pond; it focuses on the creation of Super Meat Boy and Fez, along with the men (and women, as you will see) whose entire lives are changed and even irreversibly transformed by the games: Edmund McMillen, Tommy Refenes, and Phil Fish.
Our directors, Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, begin a journey into what, exactly, it takes to be a modern-day storyteller: one who creates an interactive, all-encompassing second world within a world.
Their stylish use of wide-angle shots, actually good use of shallow depth of focus, the uber bright colours and its contrast to the often white, minimalist boxes the designers are framed in – suddenly we realised that this film is about making a world accessible to the non-gamer. As ever, truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to the analysis of a craft that suffers for its art.
The exhausting perfectionism, the battle against deadliness: it’s sometimes easy to forget that our three characters are all real-world supergeeks who face the same dilemma we do: how on earth do you get noticed in a world where the bigshots monopolise the market?
Although a few members of the team are Steam-freaks and mainstream gamers, we were astonished by how sensitive this film and how well it simply told a story, without being elitist as the scene can sometimes be known for. We were lucky enough to watch it at Sheffield Doc Fest – and by the end, we were all in tears.
Indie Game: The Movie. Watch it for free with us. We promise you won’t be disappointed.
Jane and the Team, Future Artists
(50 people only! We want you to demand another screening for our Film Festival!).
http://indiegameblacklion.eventbrite.com/