Review"Indie Game: The Movie" finally getting hometown run in Winnipeg

You don’t have to be a fanboy to get caught up in Indie Game. (Seriously. I’m speaking here as someone who hasn’t played videogames since Pong.)

—Alison Gillmor, CBC Reviewer

In this smart, engaging doc -- which has been making headlines for months and is finally getting a hometown run -- Winnipeg filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky look at three indie game developers and their stressed-out, sleep-deprived struggles to create.  

We meet super-intense Montrealer Phil Fish, whose adorably retro video game, Fez, is stalled in a buggy, litigious, long-delayed development phase. Even as he labours to get the thing running, he keeps masochistically checking online forums to read complaints. ("What's taking so long?" "We hate you, Phil Fish.")

There's San Francisco-based Jonathan Blow, the touchy guy behind the time-twisting Braid, who lurks on the blogosphere combating negative reviews. Even positive reviews leave him feeling tragically misunderstood.  


Indie Game: The Movie official trailer

And then there's Tommy Refenes. Working on what could potentially be a multimillion-dollar project - the launch of Super Meat Boy - he's living in his teenaged bedroom and eating at the Waffle House at 4:00 a.m., becoming increasingly overwhelmed by isolation, overwork and unbearable pressure.  

The human stories are fascinating, but Swirsky and Pajot are playing with bigger ideas. Looking at quirky, committed creators who operate outside the blockbuster game system, they show how indie artists can bypass centralized, corporatized culture by working the hell out of new technologies, digital distribution platforms and social media. So yes, the movie is about games, but it also seems to be tracking a massive paradigm shift.  

Indie Game: The Movie is also about indie film. Pajot and Swirsky's own story is a marvel of tenacity, DIY creativity and Cinderella success, making the screenings this week at Cinematheque something of a happy homecoming.

Start-up money for Indie Game was crowd-funded via the internet, and even after the film became a hit at Sundance (with mega-producer Scott Rudin optioning the film for an HBO series), the young filmmakers decided to self-distribute, touring in person with the film to 15 US cities.

You don't have to be a fanboy to get caught up in Indie Game. (Seriously. I'm speaking here as someone who hasn't played videogames since Pong.)

This is a highly watchable film, beautifully shot and intelligently edited. Even though a lot of the footage centres on guys sitting in front of computers - much of the action takes place on YouTube, Twitter feeds and blogs - the filmmakers really understand how to make that cinematic, how to roll it into the narrative.

  In the end, Indie Game is about the agonies and ecstasies of the creative process. The subjects of Indie Game make work that is personal and passionate, vulnerable and honest. The film feels that way, too.