Country: France
Year: 2020
Duration: 18'
A former military game designer was spotted in a video game competition organized by the army. Before going to war, he made video game scenarios that prepared soldiers to cultural shocks and healed trauma. Once back from the war, his relationship with his identity, with life and with the video game radically changed.
Biography
film director
Antonine Chapon
(France, 1990) is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris. He studied fine art, philosophy and social studies. In 2019, he learned literary Arabic at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. His work questions the relationship between fact and fiction, the role of the archive and new technologies in documentary, and the possibility of making new forms in the age of digital reproduction. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Open Codes: The World as a Field of Data at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Museum. His first film My Own Landscapes (2020) won the award for best short film at the Visions du Réel Festival in Nyon, and the award for best short documentary film at the Norwegian Short Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
My Own Landscapes (doc, cm, 2020)
Declaration
film director
“After September 11, 2001, the United States invested in the creation of video games to recruit, train and treat soldiers. Today video games have an important part in war. Since 2013, the American army has regularly organized video game competitions to recruit future soldiers. Similarly in the video game “Armerica’s army,” good players receive a contract by email. The transition from virtual to real is brutal. This is why some players have violent traumas when they discover the reality of war. In the era of virtual reality helmets and killer drone pilots, I would like to show images of a video game used by the American and French armies. The film is based on interviews with Cyril, a veteran who knows this video game very well and now uses it in his own way. The film opens up his world to us, which he makes every day. A world of alienation and emancipation where nature is a second life.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, EDITING, SOUND, ANIMATION, PRODUCTION: Antoine Chapon. CAST: Cyrille Poitevineau-Millin, Thendral Tiroumalechetty (voice).
CONTACTS: Antoine Chapon studioantoinechapon@gmail.com
