Village Gamer

The Impromptu Film Festival will be taking place at the Vancouver International Film Centre, Vancity Theatre on Seymour Street this coming weekend. The Festival will run from noon until 5pm, with tickets costing $15.00 for either Session A or Session B, or $20.00 for both sessions. You can purchase advance tickets at Biz Books, which is located at 302 West Cordova Street.

According to the event’s website, “featuring films from around the world, in this one day celebration of getting films seen and off the ground. This festival aims to promote filmmakers with future projects in development, showcasing what they’ve created in the past.” To date, 3 films have been added to the Festival’s schedule, 2008 Leo Award Winner Centigrade, 2007 Academy Award Winner The Danish Poet, and 2008 Academy Award nominee Madame Tutli-Putli, with more to be announced very soon.

Proceeds from the Festival will go in part to help with pre-production costs (up to $2 500.00) for independent films. One quarter of the proceeds will also go to assist in the creation of the UBC Film Production Scholarship.

The Impromptu Film Festival is sponsored in part by The Vancouver International Film Centre, Video Openhouse Tours, Spread Media Inc., Silverlight Films, Steven Nash Sports Club, Biz Books, The Celluloid Social Club, Telescopic Camera Cranes Ltd, and PS.

Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise From the Basement To The Big Time
Author: Michael Kane
June 2008

Games Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time by Michael Kane is the best inside look at the competitive videogaming industry I have read to date. He peels back the layers of this very complex subculture and lays it all out there for anyone to read – from the gamers themselves to the parents who try to understand. Game Boys has it all – the celebratory victories, the heartbreaking losses, the passion of its supporters, and he doesn’t leave out the backroom dirty laundry either.

This book is an informative, exciting, unsanitized read; he does not sugarcoat the competitive gaming industry; instead he offers an outsider’s perspective of a largely misunderstood section of today’s society. Author Michael Kane has managed to translate the excitement of competition into his words, and sometimes I found myself reading faster through the competition gameplay to get to the moment of victory – even though I already knew the results of many of the matches he wrote about.

As a participant full of passion for the videogame industry, there were so many times I found myself identifying with CompLexity GM Jason Lake and harbouring feelings of resentment towards Craig Levine. Like Jason Lake, I believe in the grassroots foundation of this wonderful industry, and even though Craig Levine has done much to get competitive videogaming out there into the main stream of today’s world, I often felt that Levine’s tactics were less than honourable, and I am of the generation when honour was at the forefront of how you conducted your life. These are elements which make for a great book – eliciting emotion and appreciation from the reader, making the reader care about the characters in the story.
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