★★★☆
The 21st WOW Film Festival saw the premiere of GTFO, a documentary that, with skill, insight and courage, explores the murky world of gaming and the lives of the women who dare enter it.
Everybody knows you can’t have a premiere without some light entertainment beforehand, and WOW included the screening of some short animations. The energy of the room was pleasantly amicable to start with, beverages hither and thither being swished around, but after seeing the animation talent from students at AIT and beyond, it is safe to say we will never be bored again. Hoorah.
With eyes sparkling and mouths gaping, we watched Helen chase after a cigarette through the space-time continuum, and were brought to tears by pieces of playdough. Take a load of that, Pixer or Pisney or whatever you’re called. Win, win, winners. We may all have the chicken dinners.
And then GTFO arrived. Rarely does one feel comfortable to openly gawk at a screen, and we’re not talking about the mind-bending antics of Inception or the radiant beauty that emits from Hugh Jackman’s face: this was pure open-mouthed incredulity at what you were seeing.
From the visionary mind of director Shannon Sun-Higginson, GTFO throws the viewer into an unapologetically raw investigation of the discrimination and misogyny that is rife within the $20 billion video game world. Through interviews with video game developers, journalists and academics – both men and women – layer after layer of discrimination, cybervandalism and death threats are peeled away to uncover the systemic and human impulses towards acts of harassment.
It’s a harrowing watch, but the last challenge is left to the audience. It is for us to enter into this conversation, and it is for us to call out obscene behaviour in order to shape the future of the video game world, where gender can be irrelevant and playing the game can be all that matters.
GTFO was reviewed on Thursday April 28 as part of WOW Film Festival 2016.
