Released on screens on April 17, the documentary “Knit’s Island”, produced by a trio trained at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, questions the relationship with reality in an online video game. The result is as astonishing as it is quite fascinating.
Video game universes in gigantic open worlds, sometimes naturalistic and hypnotic like the western Red Dead Redemption 2, or totally urban like GTA V, a true video game counterpart to the city of Los Angeles, have also given rise in their wake to the desire many artists, photographers or filmmakers for example, to discover and immerse themselves in these works, as so many research materials for their creations.
Whether for their natural or urban environments, or, of course, for their communities of players, capable of spending hundreds of hours in their favorite universes.
Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier and Quentin L’helgoualc’h met during their studies at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier. In 2016, they formed a research group which questions the relationship to reality in online video games. In 2017 they tried their hand at a first documentary exploration in the game GTA V Online and produced the medium-length film Marlowe Drive, which they broadcast on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition on the cinema of David Lynch at the art center from Montpellier.
Selling your skin very dearly
At the work of this Knit’s island, the trio this time sets down their suitcases on an absolutely gigantic island, measuring 250 km². It sometimes takes hours to get from one point to another on foot, especially when you don’t have a vehicle to drive. A hostile territory in which individuals come together as a community to simulate a survivalist fiction. In the guise of avatars, the trio of directors enter this place and come into contact with players.
A place that the most experienced players will certainly recognize. This is the fascinating and desolate universe of the game DayZ. Released in 2013, it places players in a post-apocalyptic zombie world, where a mysterious epidemic has transformed most of the population into aggressive infected beings.
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His world is absolutely merciless and perfectly punitive. In good and pure Survival, you have to take care of yourself, eat, sleep, build and arrange shelters, and fight against the zombies that infest the island. And above all, prepare to sell yourself dearly against other players. The quest for survival equipment (weapons, armor, etc.) becomes a quest for the Grail.
Taking a misplaced bullet means permanent death… And the loss of all your equipment. Back to square one. Enough to happily ruin hundreds of hours spent on it. And above all, something to unite players together, who form communities and help each other.
“We feel like we have real memories, like it really happened”
To be able to produce the fascinating material of their subject, which is almost a sociological study, the directors immersed themselves in this universe for hundreds of hours, ultimately resulting in 170 hours of rushes.
DayZ is a game that encourages role-playing, each character has their own story which evolves according to the player’s imagination. The people met in Knit’s Island reveal themselves without leaving their characters, or very rarely. Here, a character encountered in the middle of the night teaches them how to find their way by reading the sky map using the position of the Big Dipper.
There, the meeting with a group of anarchists who called themselves “the Shadows of the Night”, led by a woman, who blurted into her microphone: “We all have different origins, but we have one thing in common: we like killing. Killing people is fun. Some people eat them too.”
Further, it is a community of players who advocate non-violence, more concerned with growing vegetables in their vegetable gardens than with eradicating the threat of zombies or fighting against hostile players, by trying to live as in a bunker.
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And what about this avatar dressed like in a western, reverend of a Lovecraftian-leaning church called “Church of Dagoth”? How does he go about surviving? “I think we all have different influences from apocalypse films, zombie films” comments the player behind his microphone. “Some people like to play bad guys, others like lone wolves. It’s like a long movie here.” He adds : “After several adventures, we feel like we have real memories, as if it really happened.”
“Many players emphasize the contemplative side of the game. We have the impression that it even becomes a substitute for some of them for walks in nature or moments of relaxation” comments Ekiem Barbier, one of the directors. Not necessarily enough to make them lose touch with reality, as we would tend to think, out of ease and intellectual laziness.