Machinima at BitFilm Festival

The BitFilm Festival is coming up and I wanna go! It's an odd - although really cool festival. It opens on May 1st and lasts til May 8th in Stuttgart - and then there's a closing event in Hamburg from 10th til 12th of July.

I wanna go for the machinima screenings on May 5th and May 6th - although the whole week looks like pure joy. I'm trying to come up with alternatives of people willing to pay me to go - any ideas anyone?

I'm having a hard time figuring out the site however. I can't seem to get my hands on which Machinima films are nominated but maybe that's the intention. According to the buzz of the blogs I follow, I now know of three.

1) Among Fables and Men - Dopefish

Goarr! Isn't this amazing. Here's an interview with him (Eddo Stern?) at Networked Performance.

Many of these videos represent elements of gamer culture that are still “officially” kept out of the game world — sex, drugs, real violence, death, etc. — but fan-based machinima, and forums postings become the spaces where these aspects of the gaming culture find an outlet, their expression in-game is repressed by the game companies censorship - they offer a glimpse into the subculture of the subculture.

2) I'm So Sick - Baron Soosdon

3) The Ballad of the Sex Junkie - Olibith

All excellent nominations. Coincidence that they're all Warcraft Movies?

BitFilm has created a virtual city, Bitropolis in Twinity.

The Bitropolis city centre consists of a cinema, a gallery, a bar and a night club. Create your avatar, enjoy cinema screenings, meet other film makers and film fans.

I've applied for access - but haven't received a beta account yet. I wonder if I might get in touch with Singapore crab dinner friend Jeremy Snyder and see if he can pull some strings. Because I think it's excellent that the festival has created a virtual city - that's the direction virtuality should be going in my opinion - it's a shame that there's not more instant access though.

So I wanna go wanna go wanna go! I've started my own paper on machinima - but so far it's just three pages of me rambling trying to figure out what it is I really want to say - I'm pleased that I've at least started, though, it took me long enough. I'm missing my books, my old computer and all the papers I've printed out.