Knit's Island
Wednesday 05.06.24
![Knitsisland](https://optimise2.assets-servd.host/kunstnernesh-site/production/knitsisland.jpg?w=1920&h=1440&auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&dm=1716883775&s=85f1b40771216765266738eb9a046e5e)
In the guise of avatars, a film crew enters an online video game. They come into contact with a community of players and meet their stories, fears, and aspirations. Students from the master's program Screen Cultures at the University of Oslo are inviting to a screening of Knit's Island. After the film, there will be a conversation about gaming, grounded in media science, between the students and researcher Steffen Krüger.
About the film
Somewhere on the Internet, there is a space of 250 square kilometres in which individuals gather in community to simulate a survivalist fiction. Under the guise of avatars, a film crew enters this place and makes contact with the ’locals’’ This mysterious, post-apocalyptic rural landscape is revealed as a meeting place, where stories, ideas and friendships are shared. Mixing their memories of the game with the stories of their real lives, a group will take us on a walk on the borders of the Internet. By going to the edge of the game, in search of the limits of this place, the film explores the first steps of the virtualization of our lives, and questions the future of our world.
About the filmmakers
Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier and Quentin L’helgoualc’h met at the School of Fine Arts of Montpellier. In 2016 they formed a research group that questions the relationship to reality in online video games. In 2017 they tried their hand at a first documentary exploration in the game GTA V Online, and directed the medium-length film Marlowe Drive, which they screened during a retrospective exhibition of David Lynch’s cinema at the Art Center of Montpellier, MO.CO. The film goes to meet avatars animated by real people and addresses issues concerning our relationship to virtual through the representation of the American consumerist dream suggested by the game. The film was presented at the Brive medium-length film festival, at the FIFIB Bordeaux, at the Centquatre studio and at the Cartier foundation, among others. In 2018 they began writing the feature-length documentary Knit’s Island, also shot entirely in an online game.