A MAZE. / Berlin 2016

For those who still think that video games are only aimed at teenage boys the time has finally come to rethink your judgement! In reality, you would be surprised to know that there are more female players than male players. Even more surprising, they don’t spend their entire time playing Candy Crush! It’s a fact that the majority of video games protagonists are male and that female protagonists, when they exist, tend to fall in one of these highly stereotypical categories: damsel in distress, sexy lady, hot girl with big boobs and big guns… And, yes, evidently mainstream video games can be extremely sexists. However, even though they seem stuck between developers who assume that the heterosexual male teen demographic is the only one that matters, and the marketing geniuses who relish the opportunity make more money by creating games only aimed girls, women are fighting back to reclaim their space.  From female gamers to female developers, “Les filles aux manettes " (literally Girls hold the controls) gives a voice to women in the video game industry.

About the director:

Sonia Gonzalez is a journalist and filmmaker. In 2011, after a few years spent working as an Assistant Director in Berlin and Paris, she becomes a collaborative fellow for a year at a Center for Documentary Arts in Brooklyn and directs her first short-film “Desperately Seeking Stagg Girls”. Her passion for feminist issues, counter-cultures and the history of indie rock music, leads her in 2014 to contribute to the writing of a documentary “Princesses, Pop Stars and Girl Power” directed by Cécile Denjean. In 2015, she directs her first 52-minute documentary ”Revolution Riot Grrrl Style” and its accompanying web series “Des filles et des zines”.  

Game sound has never gotten the recognition that it deserves. It is, as our interviewees described, the “ugly stepchild”, “evil stepsister”, that “nobody cares about”. When it’s good, as Tracy Bush says, sound “is a ninja”. It’s invisible. And the artists who have worked hard to overcome technological obstacles to bring that sound to life have been equally as invisible. Beep covers the history of game sound (voice, music and sound effects) from the Victorian penny arcades, through pinball and early video game arcades to today.

Beep filmed nearly 90 interviews with game audio professionals from around the world and throughout game history. At the heart of the film is the ongoing struggle between creativity and technology as what the artists want to achieve, and what is technologically possible, intertwine in new and challenging ways throughout game history. The Beep project is a feature-length documentary film, series of webisodes (each interview plus bonus material), two-volume book set and interactive documentary (in progress).

The art of mixing an interactive medium with the visual style of a movie is entering new ground: Directing, acting and producing machinimas can be done by a one man army in realtime and is therefore only bund to imagination. Join the Berlin-based Night of Machinima for a fun showcase of recent works through a diversity of topics, techniques and culture!