Anniversary Year Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig Team up for The
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Back to the Future with 4K • David Picker on Ingmar Bergman a publication of 20th Anniversary Year Joshua funny Oppenheimer Th e Act of Killing Richard girl Linklater Before Midnight Noah Baumbach Sarah Polley Stories We Tell and Greta Gerwig Jem Cohen team up for the Museum Hours spirited New York Olivier Assayas tale FRANCES HA Something in the Air Issa Rae Th e Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl Spring 2013, Vol. 21, #3 $5.95 U.S. / $7.95 Canada 31 7625274 93694 FilmmakerMagazine.com COLUMNS GAME ENGINE Civilian Casualties Heather Chaplin on Unmanned. ’ve been reviewing the fourth installment of Gears of War recently, and it’s gotten Ime thinking about military games. Gears takes place on a planet called Sera and you fi ght big locusts, so it’s not exactly the U.S. Army, like, say, Call of Duty, but it’s the same basic idea — lots of weapons, lots of choices of weapons and lots of killing. Now, people are always talking about “violent video games” and the harm they do to young minds, and this drives me crazy for two reasons. The fi rst is simple: video games aren’t violent. They deal in repre- sentations of violence, and that may be Unmanned something you have a problem with, but be clear: it’s not actual violence. It might be a with lots of midcentury furniture. I’m not continue” appears on the screen. At fi rst problem, but it’s a diff erent problem. Rugby sure how much I represent anger.” you think something is wrong with the — that’s a violent game. Okay, fair enough. Pedercini is now a vis- game, then you start to think that maybe Second, as to whether playing games iting assistant professor of art at Carnegie something is wrong with you for chafi ng that traffi c in violent representations makes Mellon, teaching media production and ex- under a slower pace. The game is as much you more violent, I’ll say this — you’re bark- perimental game design, and presumably a commentary on video games themselves, ing up the wrong tree. has health insurance and other indicators of and what we expect from them, as it is on The instinct is right. But the question is an upper-middle-class life. But in an indus- American foreign policy. wrong. There is something to be concerned try that remains adamantly apolitical, even Unmanned is a day-in-the-life story of about when it comes to military-style on the edges, his work is a breath of fresh a drone pilot done in stylized, blocky, lo-fi shooter games and being bombarded with air. (Can fresh air be angry?) animation. We follow him for 24 hours as these hyper-violent images, but it’s not Pedercini is from Milan by route of north- he has nightmares about being beaten by a what you think. It’s not that these games ern Italy. He fi rst came to notice in the U.S. member of the Taliban, drives to work, hits turn innocent babes into violent maniacs. in 2006 with his McDonald’s Videogame, on his fellow drone pilot, talks with his wife, But they are teaching people how to be a simulation that has players clearing rain plays fi rst-person shooter video games good soldiers. Play Call of Duty, or Gears forests, bribing offi cials and destroying vil- with his son and suff ers from insomnia. of War, and you’re learning skills such as lages. Since then, there’s been Faith Fight In other words, not much happens in Un- how to fl ush out a building, how to set up (“religious hate has never been so much manned. You choose from dialogue options a kill zone and how to work with a squad in fun”) and Operation: Pedopriest (“cover-up whether to be a more thoughtful husband a combat situation. I would say you’re be- the sex scandals, restore the faith”) — to and father or whether to be a total jerk. If you ing desensitized to images of war violence, name just a few. don’t drive your car straight on the road, you which would come in handy, if, say, you Unmanned is a more thoughtful, more get into an accident and miss out on one of were a drone pilot. meditative piece of work, though it cer- the game’s strangest moments, which is a ka- All of which leads me to Unmanned. tainly carries Pedercini’s signature stinging raoke section to Queen’s “One Vision.” (“One Capturing a day in the life of a drone pi- fury fl eshed out as humor. It’s an extremely world / one nation / one true religion” and lot, Unmanned is the latest creation from slow game, full of strangely mundane tasks, then “One man / one goal / one mission.”) the brilliant Paolo Pedercini and his “radical such as shaving in the mirror, driving on a The song takes on a whole other meaning videogaming project,” Molleindustria. straight road and smoking a cigarette. Or driving down a pixilated desert highway on I ran into Pedercini last month, and I told take the dialog in the game. What happens your way to operate a drone strike. him I was glad someone like him was bring- in Unmanned is to a large extent determined Almost the entire game is done in split ing a little anger to the indie gaming scene. by your choices of the dialogue options. But screens. In one case, the action on one half Pedercini looked at me like I was stupid and every time a line of dialog appears, several of the screen is shaving the drone pilot’s big said, “I live in a nice apartment in Pittsburgh seconds pass before the fl ashing “click to see page 93 PHOTO COURTESY OF MOLLEINDUSTRIA OF COURTESY PHOTO 22 FILMMAKER SPRING 2013 the source of POD’s most valuable growth. Visit Films’ Ryan Kampe agrees. “I think ters the screen — while the conversation POD is currently in beta and needs the help there are people in the foreign community takes place on the other side of the screen. of consumers to improve.” who are old school, like Italian or German It’s funny. It’s horrible. It’s disorienting. For now, BMC is hedging their bets on a or Russian buyers, in particular, who would And yes, it’s angry. Even if its maker lives collaboration with Hollywood, hoping that say: Nope, can’t buy it,” says Kampe, who in a nice apartment.■ the cinematic experiences that audiences recently took on Sheldon Candis’s LUV, love will be the gateway BMC needs to con- which stars rapper Common, Dennis Hay- FEST CIRCUIT vince consumers to become a host for POD. sbert and Danny Glover. “But more and from page 21 Only time will tell if users of device-based more, I think it’s fi lm dependent.” some very high temperature bacteria, but mobile applications will be ready to take the Indeed, Adam Leon’s Bronx-set low- nothing that can build rockets … I want to leap to become hosts for biotech solutions budget Gimme the Loot, which stars two die on Mars — just not on impact.” that live inside them. But one thing is for African-American unknowns, has sold to Speakers such as Musk were undeniably sure: Hollywood has a never-ending supply major distributors in France and the U.K. fascinating at SXSW this year, even as shifts of stories, much of which is sitting around and smaller ones in Spain and Greece, ac- in the tech landscape meant that many of on shelves collecting dust. cording to Eric Schnedecker, head of sales the conference’s topics — life on Mars! — To learn more about BMC and POD, Film- and acquisitions at France-based sales seemed a bit distant from the lives of early- maker recommends you visit the website, company Urban Distribution International. career developers for whom consumer app http://www.bodymindchange.ca.■ He says the problem is less about race and development is this generation’s version more about “U.S. indies in general,” which of starting a garage-rock band (or making EXTRA CURRICULAR suff er as a result of “Hollywood hegemony an indie fi lm). Indeed, with venture capital from page 14 abroad” and European subsidies that sup- fl owing to the less-sexy enterprise sector, tory of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and port their own domestic fi lms. and the next wave of transformative inno- North Carolina and his vast library. Gatten’s But veteran international sales executive vation (biotech and personalized medicine) fi lms are about reading, writing, thinking David Glasser, CEO of The Weinstein Com- a few years out, SXSW Interactive featured and knowing, and they deal explicitly with pany, which acquired worldwide rights to rock star speakers such as Pettis and Musk, the material of fi lm — emulsion, light and Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale after its Sundance as well as Al Gore — who described his sale dust, for example. In 2012, however, Gatten triumph, believes the “times are changing,” of Current TV to Al Jazeera as “the most also made a three-hour digital work, The Ex- he says. “We sold every territory on Fruitvale.” disruptive move on the chessboard” — travagant Shadows, that invited the artist to “Sure, we have obstacles to overcome,” ac- and Megaupload Dark Lord Kim Dotcom. explore a new form of writing and cinematic knowledges Glasser. “But I think a good movie Alongside the usual seminars on coding composition, as well as more extreme forms domestically is a good movie internationally.” and development, there seemed to be a of duration.