GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS

GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS Introduction

Cinematexas presents the first annual GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS, a showcase of the fuzzy leading edge in the technologies and visual artistry of digital gaming. GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS will take place Friday, September 19-Sunday, September 21. Most GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS events will take place in the Avaya Auditorium (room 2.302) of the University of Texas' ACES Building (on the corner of 24th and Speedway Streets). See the full schedule (.pdf) for more details.

This year's GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS is only a hint at what's to come: next year, a full-blown indie and student games competition will be included on the schedule. Come take part in the beginning of something new and maybe surprising...new for film festivals, not surprising for Cinematexas.

GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS is made possible by the University of Texas' College of Communication and the Digital Media Collaboratory. Special thanks to Dean Ellen Wartella and Dr. Alex Cavalli.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"The incorporation of virtual camera controls into the very hardware of game consoles is truly a historic event. Directing the virtual camera becomes as important as controlling the hero's actions....[In computer games], cinematic perception functions as the subject in its own right..." - Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media

You may look around at the screens surrounding you at Games Without Borders and wonder what on Earth is happening. You may wonder about the odd (and occasionally foul-mouthed) little characters -- people, animals and robots -- and struggle to suspend your disbelief. You may wonder why you're being asked to play, to interact with the screen, instead of simply to view. More pointedly, you may simply ask, "What in the hell does any of this have to do with a film festival?"

Cinema is changing. Rather, it continues to change, as it always has. New technologies and the techniques they suggest have come to permeate the medium of film, from the digital editing suites used by poverty-stricken indie producers to the explosive compositing effects in the money products spewed forth from Southern California. None of this is news. You know what The Computer has brought to the art of film. Not always positive results, to be sure, but almost always interesting. The result is usually something that stretches or even shatters the boundaries and borders of the medium (even if we don't always notice). It's something that can expand our expectations of cinema and, on occasion, something which stands scrutiny as "art". Sometimes, the result is even that which might approach "liberation".

The world of digital gaming is not only a world of product and consumption, but also a world of tools. Not only is it an entertainment industry with a global bottom line approaching an estimated $11 billion annually, but also a set of practices which can be learned and taken up by anyone with the drive and desire for self expression...the ambition to build personal worlds and public playspaces...artistic creations and liminal transgressions.

As traditional cinema continues to evolve, so do those forms of expression which stand (by some measures) on its periphery. Digital gaming has evolved from simple, crude playspaces to a medium that invites participation. Whether that participation takes the form of simple playful interaction or instead grows into independent production is entirely up to the individual, her needs and desires. Games Without Borders provides an opportunity for the practitioners to show their wares (don't worry, you'll be able to play them too). Whether it's remixes of classic games, miniature movies emerging wholly from the brow of the engines that drive the medium, or student-built and indie playthings, every one of the digital objects seen at this inaugural Games Without Borders is a bleeding-edge, boundary-crossing, border-running expression of someone's need to redefine both cinema and themselves. We'll even have brilliant people on hand to help explain what it all means (because we certainly aren't venturing any guesses).

Besides, if Lev Manovich can, as he does, use Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (one of the oldest pieces of thoughtful cinema) as a means of talking about "new media", we can surely use our own examples of the newest of the new to talk about cinema.

You're invited. Come and play.

- Erich Pelletier

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

All GAMES WITHOUT BORDERS events are free and open to the public.