Rich Pickings presents: Six Degrees of Freedom

a short film event in partnership with East End Film Festival and the Institute of Psychoanalysis

Is life just a game? Can it be made into one? In this evening of short film and discussion, Rich Pickings looks at how game structures can be applied to art and everyday life. A programme of short films will be followed by discussion with filmmakers, game designers, psychoanalysts and others, who together will examine the myths and realities around ideas of gamification.

Speakers include:

David Morgan is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is also a consultant psychotherapist and a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London. He has written and edited various books and articles as well as being involved in TV documentary work.

Adrian Hon is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start, specialising in creating new forms of storytelling through ARGs, transmedia, or mobile and web-based games. He also writes about technology for The Telegraph, is writing a Kickstarter-funded book and blog called A History of the Future in 100 Objects, co-organises the Hive Mind Challenge and is the founder of Transmedia London. Adrian studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, specialising in experimental psychology and neuroscience.

Film programme includes:

GUY 101 (Dir. Ian W Gouldstone)

A man hears a story about a hitchhiker from the other side of the Internet in this BAFTA winning short.

BLIND MAN’S ALLEY (Dir. Tony Kelly)

Eight games. 11 deaths. Game nine begins as five new players arrive at this year’s secret location.

AVATAR DAYS (Dir. Gavin Kelly)

A documentary portrait of four online gamers in Dublin whose daily lives contrast with their virtual identities. The film uses 3D and Motion Capture animation to insert the players’ in-game characters in place of their real selves against the backdrop of the banal urban landscape which they inhabit.

STRIKE – 5 mins (Dir. Nadia de Castro)

The search for a lost memory in one man’s mind, told through visual metaphors.

OXFAM – FACE THE MUSIC (Dir. Ian W Gouldstone)

Using game symbols and graphics, this film illutrates how poor communities are being hit first and worst by the effects of climate change, despite having contributed least to it.

INTERNET STORY (Dir. Adam Butcher)

A strange, fast-paced film told through fragments of internet videos, animations, blogs and news articles. A series of shocking events unfolds when a young man creates a public treasure hunt for his own amusement and a video blogger decides to pursue the riddles across country.