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SILVERDOCS - Splice of Life
Go see the one about the over-the-hill roller-derby players. Skip the one about the giant anarchist bicycles. And, depending on how much reality you can take, you might want to take a chance on the one about the woman with breast cancer.
...Some of this year’s better documentaries, however, are serious considerations of not-so-serious topics, from the live-action role-playing of Darkon to the roller-derbying of Jam to the eccentric extension of a career on the ball field in Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey.
Darkon
Anyone who’s seen the much-e-mailed clip of the “Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!” kid might think he understands live-action role-playing (or “LARPing”): a beyond-geeky mashup of Dungeons & Dragons and Civil War re-enactments. Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer’s film sets out to disprove that perception—especially the “beyond-geeky” part. Their subjects are real people with jobs, families, and, yes, lives outside the game. The co-directors spent nearly three years following a group of Baltimore-area LARPers who meet every other weekend at parks and campsites to further the exploits of their alter egos through a combination of acting, political strategy, and full-contact battles with foam-padded weaponry. Each of the participants has his own reasons for spending so much time with the Darkon Wargaming Club: Andrew (aka Shapwin of Laconia) laments the suckiness of our modern age, saying, “Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone and is replaced with Wal-Mart.” Danny (aka Trivius the Nomad) gains the self-confidence he lacks in reality: “I can act like I’m not Danny. I like Danny, but sometimes Danny doesn’t have the balls to do what Danny needs to do.” The filmmakers made a surprising technical choice for a doc, depicting the gamers’ real-world lives with traditional one-on-one interviews while using Steadicams and crane shots to lend a slickly cinematic quality to their in-character interactions. It’s an effective device to represent immersion in a fictional world, but the film’s biggest success is showing how that world isn’t as unreal as it seems: Andrew and Danny’s passion, Darkon suggests, is just an amped-up version of the role-playing we all do in our daily lives.—Jason Powell
At 2:15 p.m. Saturday, June 17.
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SILVERDOCS - Splice of Life
Go see the one about the over-the-hill roller-derby players. Skip the one about the giant anarchist bicycles. And, depending on how much reality you can take, you might want to take a chance on the one about the woman with breast cancer.
...Some of this year’s better documentaries, however, are serious considerations of not-so-serious topics, from the live-action role-playing of Darkon to the roller-derbying of Jam to the eccentric extension of a career on the ball field in Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey.
Darkon
Anyone who’s seen the much-e-mailed clip of the “Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!” kid might think he understands live-action role-playing (or “LARPing”): a beyond-geeky mashup of Dungeons & Dragons and Civil War re-enactments. Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer’s film sets out to disprove that perception—especially the “beyond-geeky” part. Their subjects are real people with jobs, families, and, yes, lives outside the game. The co-directors spent nearly three years following a group of Baltimore-area LARPers who meet every other weekend at parks and campsites to further the exploits of their alter egos through a combination of acting, political strategy, and full-contact battles with foam-padded weaponry. Each of the participants has his own reasons for spending so much time with the Darkon Wargaming Club: Andrew (aka Shapwin of Laconia) laments the suckiness of our modern age, saying, “Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone and is replaced with Wal-Mart.” Danny (aka Trivius the Nomad) gains the self-confidence he lacks in reality: “I can act like I’m not Danny. I like Danny, but sometimes Danny doesn’t have the balls to do what Danny needs to do.” The filmmakers made a surprising technical choice for a doc, depicting the gamers’ real-world lives with traditional one-on-one interviews while using Steadicams and crane shots to lend a slickly cinematic quality to their in-character interactions. It’s an effective device to represent immersion in a fictional world, but the film’s biggest success is showing how that world isn’t as unreal as it seems: Andrew and Danny’s passion, Darkon suggests, is just an amped-up version of the role-playing we all do in our daily lives.—Jason Powell
At 2:15 p.m. Saturday, June 17.
