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7:30 PM-8:30 PM
Returning fire: interventions in video games
Film screening | Games and Politics
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Goethe-Institut Nicosia, Nicosia
- Language English Subtitles
- Price Admission free
- Part of series: Games and Politics
2011 | 44 minutes | English
Video games like Modern Warfare, America's Army, Medal of Honor and Battlefield are part of an exploding market of war games whose revenues now far outpace even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. The sophistication of these games is undeniable, offering users a stunningly realistic experience of ground combat and a glimpse into the increasingly virtual world of long-distance, push-button warfare. Far less clear, though, is what these games are doing to users, our political culture, and our capacity to empathize with people directly affected by the actual trauma of war. For the culture-jamming activists featured in this film, these uncertainties were a call to action. In three separate vignettes, we see how Anne-Marie Schleiner, Wafaa Bilal, and Joseph Delappe moved dissent from the streets to our screens, infiltrating war games in an attempt to break the hypnotic spell of "militainment." Their work forces all of us -- gamers and non-gamers alike -- to think critically about what it means when the clinical tools of real-world killing become forms of consumer play.
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Location
21 Markou Drakou
Next to Ledra Palace Hotel on the "Green Line"
1102 Nicosia
Cyprus
Exhibition Hall