By Heolruz and translated by Maia Sefton

Generations correspond to the idea that a certain decade is represented by a group of people. We are talking about “generations” to represent our elders or musically speaking, the different decades represent different artists or music genres. “Generations” are even mentioned in the famous game Pokemon, all of these references are part of commun knowledge to us. It is also quite similar in the cinematic world. There are of course tens of generations of directors, and many different generations of actors and actresses, etc.. I did not want to do an extremely ambitious expose recounting all emblematic people from each generation so I turned towards a wider definition of the word generations. The generation often being that of our elders. I wanted to take a look at how these people are portrayed by the camera who played and still play big roles in society.

I wanted to present a film that I hold in my heart, it’s a documentary called Plogoff, rocks against shotguns, which was released in 1980 and it focuses on a fight that led a small breton village to fight against the installation of a nuclear power plant. In this film we are interested in the problems that could transcend generations for young people to not so young. In this documentary we are lucky to have many witnesses and statements. It is not a cinematic subgenre, La déchirure ( 1984) is here to remind us how thin the border between film and documentary is. Plogoff benefited from a new outburst of support due to it’s restoration by the region of Bretagne, Bretagne’s Cinematheque, and the national cinema center. This documentary was then redistributed in cinemas in 2019 and 2020.

The year is 1980, Plogoff is a play about the mobilisation against the construction of a nuclear power plant and Felix and Nicole Le Garrec decide to join the movement. To bring light to the situation they decide to make a film, a film about the people of plogoff, a film where the (subventions) are assured by the Le Garrec family. For two months they filmed the confrontations between the police and the protestor , the speeches and interviewed many of the locals. Plogoff brings us the feelings and words of the generations in this village. While watching this film we understand the interest of
these kind of pieces, we rediscover different ways of living, differents ways of thinking and we understand the different endgames and evolutions. Filming the actor and actresses, is telling a story but filming men and women is showing their story. The generation found its place within this documentary, and in the end it was one of the only films to show in cinemas the generations opinions on the nuclear.

In a completely different register I recommend a sad but very interesting short film by Anthony Chen : Ah Ma (2007). The generational aspect is definitely found since the film is centered around one of the character’s deaths. Anthony Chen’s talents lead us through fifteen minutes of painful passage between generations. This Singaporian director was awarded at Cannes for this short film.

Wrote by Mayli and translated by Nolwenn.

Always under the spotlight, the woman’s body doesn’t have to be functional, strong or healthy, but pretty. Muscles are necessary to seem toned, but they must not be too prominent, at the risk of not being perceived as a REAL woman. Appearances are far more important to women than it is to men, because they introduced this « activity » in their lifestyles as a task to accomplish. As they say, you must suffer to be beautiful, otherwise you will never find a husband ! Aristotle, who influenced philosophy forever, kindly wrote « the male is separated from the female because the principle of movement, which represents the male in every born beings, is better and godly ; the female merely is the principle representing the matter ». Yet, the matter that is the body, is inferior, repugnant and passive compared to the great spirit represented by the male. From then on, women are only identified by their bodies, as they don’t have enough intelligence to stand out otherwise. To slack, especially on pilosity, is intolerable for women and translates a lack of discipline – for men, its a symbol of virility. Since a few years back, with the injunction to have a perfect body, we’re being asked to love what we have with a two-time guilt-creating #bodypositive : I have to try to love my body when everything I see tells me to change it.

Wanting everybody, but first and foremost women, to look alike thanks to « 10 tips to slim down before summer ! » isn’t an ideal, all the more so as women must tend to slimness, which for Noémie Renard, represents weakness. Indeed, from the start of the 1930’s in the US, when women begin to liberate themselves from the norms, and start to bare their bodies more and more, this obsession with thinness appears. The latter is often perceived as a patriarchal backfire, in which in exchange of certain rights, men then have the right to ask the women to be more obedient regarding their own physical standards for them. As a study demonstrated, sexism and adhesion to social norms are really tightly roped, and the most sexist men only find the slimmest bodies attractive. The philosopher Sandra Bartky, leaning on some of Foucaults’ works, explains that the beauty practices are in fact disciplinary practices, allowing to create more docile, weak and helpless bodies for women. For example developing biceps on a woman’s body is very badly considered since it’s a symbol of strength and we want female bodies to remain powerless. The male body also suffers from some beauty standards – although a lot less – however to be associated with strength – muscles – is a more enjoyable than having to stand with weakness.

THE summer body, as found literally everywhere during the preceding months of summer, only seems to be a matter of will : the will to exercise and eat healthier. Yet, the Arte documentary « An obese world » shows us that obese people for the most part are not lazy nor failures, but they really are not entirely in control of their weight. We are talking about a « liberal society who hates fat but creates fat people ». The conception of being overweight as being fat because we don’t do physical exercise is nothing more than an alibi for the food industry ; the reciprocity of this statement being : if you do exercise, you can eat and drink whatever you want. However, despite all the reality shows showing us the miraculous power of the gym – which can allegedly help us lose dozens of lbs in only a couple of weeks without the yo-yo effect – physical exercise alone, is in fact inefficient : if a 230lbs weighing person was to run 7 miles, they would have consumed 1000 calories, or 2 chocolatines [pains au chocolat here in the South of France, Translator’s note]. To change dietary habits is therefore crucial if a person doesn’t want to intensely exercise for two hours to only barely eliminate their breakfast. Thus, by encouraging fast foods implantation especially in poor neighbourhoods – where obesity levels is already high – the american government is subsidising to this obesity epidemic. Obviously, the poor and middle-class people are the most affected, this can be seen in supermarkets : fatty and sugary foods are far cheaper than organic, healthy and natural foods – complete and organic coconut sugar is five times more expensive than white refined sugar. In many grocery stores in Mexico – country devastated by the American’s sugary drinks industry -,  bottle of water is more expensive than a bottle soda.

Nonetheless, as the culture of diets is well engraved in our societies, a heavy responsibility weighs on those who dare to be physically outside the norms, in an often open fatphobia. Let’s remind ourselves that the argument of health in not valid, partly because the size of an individual’s body doesn’t specifically tell us a lot about their health, but mostly because if the « anti-fats » really wanted to increase humanity’s lifespan, their focus would rather be on economic inequalities – in average, the poorest French people live 13 years less than the richest.

@Filokunst

Personally I’m not a big fan of summer, I find that this season is just a large amount of time where people force themselves to complete meaningless and futile tasks under the pretext that it’s to get us out of our comfort zones. This idea is not necessarily contemptible, but personally summer has always taken the form of a trip to the Atlantic ocean. An ocean from which the only thing we take full advantage of is this incomprehensible body of water that is a constant reminder of how insignificantly small we are. Unlike other landscapes, but the ocean is the only one to make me feel this heavy weight that is loneliness. Being at a loss in the face of the incomprehensible, and the fear of getting lost, never being able to find shore. I always assumed that I wasn’t the only person who gets this feeling of discomfort when faced with the seemingly endless body of water that is the ocean. So when a game decided to exploit this feeling and made it a starting point for the development of all their ideas, it piqued my curiosity.

I saw this game: Sea Of Solitude. (July 5, 2019, available on PS4, Xbox and PC) while it was competing for the title of best indie game at the 2019 Games Awards. I’ve already had the opportunity to talk about Sea Of Solitude in a previous issue. Although I mainly focused on its creator Cornelia Geppert and her approach to video games. Today I’m primarily going to focus on the use of water, the omnipresent and founding landscape. A quick reminder, this game from Jo Mei Games shows us that we need to embrace our fears like the creator did by staging her trauma with this game.

We follow the journey of a character called Kay on her little motor boat, who is travelling around a small town submerged by the sea. In this town there are two different types of living beings: monstrous black animals (crows, jellyfish, chameleons, wolves, crustaceans and a whale) and luminous beings. There are also two types of humanoid beings: Kay and a radiant young girl dressed in an anorak with a bright yellow bob. This contrast between light and dark, fear and hope can be found throughout the game. Monsters hide within the black water with the sole purpose of destroying you. The water is your enemy just like in many games, touching the water or staying in it for too long will lead to your death. This is to add a more practical side to the game since it makes it possible to delimit the playable areas from the non-playable ones and to ensure a logical end to the rest of the story. The notion of this limit is particularly visible in the passages where Kay remembers her past, since she should have her feet on the ground for these moments: the water disappears.

In Sea Of Solitude, water is present visually but it is also there to represent morality. What Cornelia Geppert is trying to explain to us through these stories and these moments of life, is that if we understand our fears we will be able to control them. The water goes from being this hostile place to a haven of peace. So now we can jump head first into this place that understands us, a place that has sheltered our sorrows, our fears and our sufferings. After all, these are the places that know us best. Once we’re free of our fears, diving into these places can only be a source of happiness. We reminisce over the miles that our little boat helped us sail across. It’s as if these places kept all our happy memories, the pleasures that were made invisible by problems that are out of our control. And it is then, at that precise moment, that we are able to see them for the first time, and we become one with ourselves and the monsters living inside of us disappear forever.

I would like to end this article with a quote from Christopher Johnson McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp the hero of the film / book that retraces his story: Into The Wild. He spent the last three years of his life trying to understand the demons that surrounded his own Sea Of Solitude. It’s only by facing the ocean that he realized the distance traveled and all that he still has to go through to reach his completion: “The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and, occasionally, the chance to
feel strong. Now, I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.”

by Bastien Silty and translated by Nolwenn.

If this tweet from Siobhan Thompson is sarcastic and only partially true, it makes us see that depression holds a huge spot in video games. Rightfully so, because it plays a great part in the making of a game, and for very different reasons, wether if we study a Triple A (or AAA which stands for every game made in a big production), or an indie game. So in this very article, guaranteed without any spoilers, we are going to see the links between work and video games.

Let’s begin with the independent games, which seems to have a favorite theme, grief and depression. We are going to talk about two indie games, Celeste (Jan 25th, 2018), from Matt Makes Games and Sea of Solitude (Jul 5th, 2019), from Jo-Mei Games. We will finish by talking about the burn outs caused by Epic Games and Fortnite (Nov 2017).
An indie developer, as suggested by Bounthavy Suvilay in her book « Indie Games », has too much problems to handle during the creation of their story, that they cannot think of what’s next. She insists that an indie game is a total investment. A financial investment, but also and foremost an investment of time and energy. The creators of Flappy Bird (2013), Antichamber (2013) or even Ridiculous Fishing (2013) sunk into depression at the launch of their game. For diverse reasons ; they found themselves without a goal after the launch, or they were guilt ridden when their money incomes were far more important than what they had hoped. This brutal change of situation added to the incomprehension happen with most indie games, especially in debut games, a creator’s first game. Indie games are made by groups of passionate, often 10 to 15 or less, either in a garage or small locals. For instance, in Extremely Ok (Celeste and TowerFall’s creators) there are 7 people, Jo-Mei Games are 13 and at Nomada Studio (GRIS’ creators) they are 10, with 7 for the music only.

Celeste tells the story of Madeline, depressed and trying to climb a mountain. On her track, she meets several characters who are going to help her in different ways. To rough it up, the story translates her will to get back on her feet helped by her friends. Matt Makes Games, after the success of TowerFall, went to live in a shared-flat with three other creators to create their next game. Nonetheless, he found himself surrounded by work on the development of TowerFall on other consoles. He explained that TowerFall’s loud success could crash his relation with his flatmates as most of the large money incomes would come to him. A new source of anxiety coming from creating video games, which he got over with the help of his flatmates. A similar scheme can be found in Cornelia Geppert and Boris Munser’s Sea of Solitude’s creation.
We follow Kay in her introspection who is trying to fight her demons, helped by her boat and her memories. Each phases of metaphoric depression can be seen. Cornelia Geppert had wanted to tell her own story through the art she excelled best in : video games. That is how we find ourselves lost in a sea of solitude in this depression filled work. In several interviews, Cornelia Geppert has described herself in her depression as a mere shadow of herself, and this metaphor is the game’s base design (cf. a picture taken from the game showing principal character Kay). In those same interviews, she has explained that the characters depicted are her own friends and family; the second to last being her ex boyfriend, suffering from a mental illness, who brought her to depression in 2014. Thus, when an indie game talks about depression, it often is because it is the creators’ (only) way to exteriorize everything they can feel inside, work becoming emancipatory for them.

For AAA games, what happens is the contrary, burn outs are present but for other different reasons. In big productions, there is a lot of people. I am not teaching you anything here, but it defines work as a whole, there is a LOT of people. In capitalist’s logic, a game has to be sold to the greater number, the story must therefore be marketable and watered-down, the artists’ visions and personal work being wiped out. Not only that, but with the logic of competition in the industry, games have to be released ever quicker and at their maximum quality. Employees are then forced to do as quickly as possible. This regularly leads these people to have burn outs. An investigation has been made with Fortnite’s developers after its global success in 2017 by Colin Campbell, from the website Polygon. He exposes the real necessity for the game to keep its leader position, Battle Royales being the most popular play mode of the last couple of years, and competitors beginning to make these kind of games. First observation, a vast majority of employees admit they have worked between 70 to 100 hours per week during the making of Fortnite. Quick reminder, the french legislation sets the maximum legal working hours at 35 per week. These overtime hours can be explained by two major factors. The first one being the practice of the « crunch », an efficient pressure tactic consisting of asking employees to work harder and for longer hours only until the game or one of its extension is launched. At Epic Games, these crunches have lasted for weeks, even months, and have often been renewed. The second explanation is the lack of syndicate in the video game industry. The IGDA or International Game Developers Association calls to an important unionization to stop these destructive practices over the employees’ mental health. The latter, often called to work on menial or precise tasks, are hired as temps, so that they cannot gather up and fight their employers and their ideals. This article still brought a bigger feeling of empathy towards the developers from the players, who then asked for release dates to be postponed, to allow the employees to have a personal life outside of their work. In 2019/2020, several games have seen their release dates delayed, without any outrage from the public. Some players have even asked Masahiro Sakurai to take a break from developing Super Smash Bros Ultimate as he seemed more and more exhausted in interviews. Thus, if Triple A doesn’t speak publicly and freely about depression or burn outs, it is mostly because it is experienced by employees who cannot express themselves, forced to follow strict agendas from their bosses, whose only concern is for their competitors’ sales revenues and always making better ones.

Links :

The Story Behind Celeste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZr40T9rvY&t=0s

Celeste’s creation team
https://exok.com/team.html

Sea of Solitude’s creation team
https://www.jo-mei.com/team

Colin Campbell’s article
https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games

Trailer Sea of Solitude
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EDcrwDCYqo

Trailer Celeste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70d9irlxiB4

By Heoluz and translated by Maia

It’s hard to find a definition for the word work. In cinema but also in the world of art where it is especially difficult to associate the artist with the amount of work that goes into a piece. What I mean by the difficulty to define the word work is that we imagine the artist’s brush moving naturally across the canvas. As if, the artist manages to effortlessly control his mouvements. We only see the canvas as a summary of its beauty and as a unique product of human genius. Generally, we only see the artist’s works (whether cinematographic or in another form of art) as the final result.We ignore the process and all the work that has been accomplished, we are oblivious to the trials and to all the problems that came up and were eventually resolved.

If we were aware of the efforts made to achieve these results, if we celebrated them for their true value then Humanity would undoubtedly grow from it. However, the society in which we live places more importance on the final product than on the process.

The excessive consumption of goods due to capitalism (of which films are an essential part) has not drawn the eye of the general public to the work provided by the artists, but instead has only shown the completed and polished products.

To link the subject of work to the film that I am going to present to you, I will rely on the concept of a painter. To create his paintings and his drawings, he needs colors which are present in nature, but also knowledge, and control which is passed down through the ages.

Thus without further ado here is Gabbeh a film that shows the transmission of this eponymous traditional carpet (gabbeh), a particular heritage in Persia.

Released in 1996, it is an Iranian film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who at the time was a very popular director in Iran. He has directed numerous films but he also starred in one: C​ lose-Up (​ 1990), a work that was inspired by a news story where a young man pretended to be Mohsen Makhmalbaf himself so that he could live a more dignified lifestyle. This film was also directed by the other great Iranian director of it’stime,AbbasKiarostami(youhavetoseeT​ hetasteofcherries​-1997).Mohen Makhmalbaf wasn’t looking to be on the big screen since he was a writer. Partisan of the Islamic Republic and opposed to the Shah of Iran, when he failed he published two novels and then turned to the cinema. Although he fully embodies the regime’s values, Mohsen Makhmalbaf discovered in the national archives, the existence of different works that changed his world views. From that point on he became a critic of the regime. And he could afford it (Iran would only experience an authoritarian turn around in the years leading up to 2000) since in 1987 ​The peddler w​ as met with great success and he acquired a certain notoriety with the Iranian public. However Gabbeh​ is one of his first works that received international recognition.

And Mohsen Makhmalbaf follows it up with incredible films such as ​The Silence (1998)​ or B​ lackboards – 2000 (​ a film directed by his daughter, Samira Makhmalbaf and produced by Mohsen and his company), the latter will be rewarded at the Cannes film festival. Nevertheless the success at the end of the 90’s concealed the Iranian state’s disinterest in cinema but also the increasing amount of private investments.

The film Gabbeh refers to a Persian carpet, it is a very colorful film. By definition Persian carpets are, they have all kinds of colors but there are many different types.

Like the Ottoman carpets, they are made thanks to a developed and highly specialized craftsmanship.

They only represent forms (in Iran, religion does not allow for human representation) and are made with precious fabrics. The one we see in the film is not meant to be sold, but to be given as an inheritance gift. The carpet is an important object for the nomade Persian community that we will follow throughout the film. In addition it is a very rustic object, it is not seen as precious in the sense that it won’t be worth a lot of money. It is their tradition, they weave both human and animal forms and it represents the different stages of life of the people in the community. For example a marriage, a birth or even a death … It is twice as important since in this film it also embodies a woman who is desperately looking for a husband, she is the « Gabbeh » and first appears after an elderly couple’s discussions from the region remembering their lives.
It’s the beginning of a long love story and we quickly understand that what for us was simply a colorful carpet is in fact a representation of Persian history. These intertwined stories of these nomadic people who are one with nature celebrate a life which unfolds to the rhythm of travelling and discovery. With the uncle teaching young children what nature has to offer, and picking flowers it allows everyone to be reminded of what eternity really is. We can thus grasp that the « gabbeh » is not only a useful object but it’s also knowledge, an object that has a soul and a lifetime worth of work put into it.

To conclude, Iranian cinema is not just about Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami, although they did and still do great works like ​The President (2015)​ or Like Someone In Love (2012)​ . And you might even have heard of Marjane Satrapi, author,designeranddirectorofP​ ersepolis(2007).​Thereisalsoacinemaforshort Iranian films and one I think that is quite interesting to watch is ​Tribute to the teachers (1977)​ by Abbas Kiarostami who wanted to show the dedication of teachers, their hard work and determination under difficult circumstances.

Which games age the best ? Does the remake of an old game or the revival of a worn out genre necessarily need to be accompanied by a change in the game play mechanics or should they be left as they were to better embrace the return to the past.

Some of Tack’s readers probably grew up with the Nintendo 64, the console that welcomed the first 3D games created by the company nippone. With the rise of 3D platform games, initiated by Super Mario 64 in 1996, Banjo-Kazooie developed by Rareware, was a striking milestone. The flawless precision of the platform, levels designed with distinct environnements, a memorable soundtrack, these were the elements remembered by the raving critics. The first one of the “Banjo” saga impacted a whole generation of players, hungry for similar experiences such as “Spyro the Dragon” or “Rayman”.

Even though 3D platform games were incredibly popular during the second half of the 90’s, the concept slowly died out due to the fact that they were quite redundant, apart from the very successful Mario Odyssey & Galaxy, the more recent productions relied on different genres. But after two decades of nothing, a group of former members of the Rareware studio decided to start a Kickstarter to fund a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. With its colorful and dreamlike universe and it’s gaming system worthy of a 3D platform game, the game Yooka-Laylee charmed it’s players. The duo (Yooka a green chameleon and Laylee a purple bat) could have been mistaken for the original protagonists of Rare’s golden age : the hero with a big heart and his flying sidekick. Released in 2017, Yooka-Laylee wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped, with fans being unpleasantly surprised: the gameplay was seen as archaic, the movements hadn’t been updated since the Nintendo 64 era, an unmoving camera and the many positioning flaws are a hindrance to the players movements. Beyond the homage that it represents, Yooka-Laylee is weighed down by the basic Game design mistakes that were already present in the 90’s.

A video game can testify to the passage of time, with the graphics and game mechanics
leaving their mark on the design models. Thus, it should be interesting to compare the
original Doom released in 1993 and the 2016 reboot. The game designed by John Carmack and the id Software Studio, was one of the first to use 3D immersive graphics, and offer the opportunity to use an array of frantic mouvements and a first-person perspective.

In the 90’s Doom became the inspiration for a new game genre : “Doom-like” is what first person shooter games were called before being replaced by FPS (first person shooter).

After a few follow ups and adaptations, Doom was rebooted, with it’s univers intact. And in 2016 players could once again find themselves on planet Mars with the demonic portals and the Cacodemons, Revenants and the other creatures risen from hell. In addition the id Software title was entirely reimagined to better conform with the design essentials of a worthy modern FPS. The inertia and the players movements underwent huge improvements and the level design was better arranged to allow for more verticality. These modifications are still consistent with the ideas introduced by the original Doom, the levels architecture already proposed battles on different levels, inclined walls, open spaces and lifts.

Doom 2016 largely reworked their battles so that it would offer a particular rhythm. To recover ammunition and life points, the hero has to fight demons in single combat. The game design forces the player to throw direct attacks, the games system doesn’t rely on the “covering” mechanism like in Gears of War, where the aim of the game is to hide behind a part of the decor before attacking. Through these combats the game-feel aims to make the player feel a certain kind of power via the avatar, by chasing and squashing these demonic creatures, in a very fast game with fluid movements to allow for better action.

Modern FPS borrow many gameplay elements from role playing games such as the skill set, grinding, the dialogues and interactions… present in Far Cry or Destiny. Doom made the choice to offer an immersive experience, with an unrestrained rhythm of action like it’s predecessor. These choices allowed it to stand out among the new releases and bring back a cool breeze of the old school.

The Doom remake succeeded in modernising a 30 year old formula by awakening the player’s nostalgia. The game design choices are a tribute to the 90’s productions with a return to the source for the genre of fast paced FPSs.