Reviews

I saw Traceroute as part of a lecture series about 'gender and tech.' I was skeptical first, but Johannes's approach is very compelling. His way of criticizing and questioning white male nerd culture (including himself) is spot on. Johannes is a political and artistic activist, and never forgets his agenda: societal change. The film presents a plethora of interesting debates and features exceptional people, and many interviewees are women/transgender (like Kit Stubbs and Sandy Stone).

Arguably the most famous resident of Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, Margaret Tait dedicated much of her life to making short, lightly experimental films that were mostly inspired by the rich and rugged terrain around her. This four minutes and twenty seconds of perfection from 1952 sees Tait training her camera on her own mother who just saunters across the landscape with a cigarette permanently dangling from her bottom lip. It's a paean to relaxation and how life can be purely defined by the connection we make to the earth, eliciting pleasure from flowers, books the wind and the light. And the simple musical accompaniment and a muttered, barely audible voice over all come together to produce a deceptively simple and nakedly moving piece of cinematic poetry.

On her way to Alaska where she hopes to find a job, young Wendy stops off in a small town in Oregon. She is travelling with her dog, Lucy, the only being who truly cares for her, and the only one that she cares for. But money runs short after a series of incidents, and Lucy disappears. From such an unexciting, not to say banal, premise, Reichardt creates a neorealist film for 21st-century America. By simply observing the harsh reality of unemployment, homelessness and the absence of healthcare, she avoids all sentimentalism to leave only the raw emotions emanating from an encounter with unfairness in a very real world. Similarly, Wendy barely cries at all despite her hardships – she only accepts other people's help with great resignation. She is at odds with her environment, a small figure against a grand background. She is rarely photographed at the centre of the frame, except when she is with Lucy. Circumstances have no compassion, but this film is about how Wendy is strong enough to accept them.

Free to Play is a 2014 documentary film by American video game company Valve Corporation. The film takes a critical look at the lives of Benedict "hyhy" Lim, Danil "Dendi" Ishutin and Clinton "Fear" Loomis, three professional Defense of the Ancients (DotA) players who participated in The International, the most lucrative eSports tournament at the time. The central focus of the film is how their commitment to DotA had affected their lives and how this debut tournament for the sequel, Dota 2, would bring more meaning to their struggles.