Post by leunas on Mar 15, 2007 13:11:30 GMT -5
In November 2005, days after France burned, a 27-year-old French industrial designer named Alex Chan created a media sensation with his machinima film "The French Democracy."
Made in about five days for zero cost (except the price of the engine, Activision's game The Movies), "Democracy" depicts three dark-skinned young men who endure daily discrimination in the Paris ghettos. When they hear about two teenagers who, while hiding from police, were electrocuted in a transformer station - the real-life flashpoint for the 2005 riots - the men join the violence in the streets. As told by the Associated Press - and The Washington Post - and MTV.com - and Business Week - the 13-minute film was Chan's attempt to correct what he saw as biased press coverage of three weeks of civil unrest in ghettos across France. "The main intention of this movie is to bring people to think about what really happened in my country," Chan told the Post, "by trying to show the starting point and some causes of these riots."
"The French Democracy" marked the popular news media's belated
discovery of machinima. And, significantly, the film highlighted the issue that has troubled the young medium from its start.
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The media's acceptance of "The French Democracy," contrasted with their widespread hysteria about videogames, confirms a gaping cultural divide. Reporters treated machinima with automatic respect, because society has accepted film as a meaningful art form. But in the public mind, games are by definition frivolous; a game with a serious instructional or artistic purpose faces skepticism, even hostility. After the scandal at the Slamdance indie film festival's 2006 Guerrila Gamemaking Competition, Slamdance organizer Peter Baxter told The New York Times, "Absolutely, games should be judged by different criteria than film. I just don't accept a direct comparison."
for more, goto: www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/88/12