The Magic Life of V

Darkon is an award-winning feature-length documentary film that follows the real-life adventures of the Darkon Wargaming Club in Baltimore, Maryland, a group of fantasy live-action role-playing (LARP) gamers.

In a contemplative coming of age portrait, PINBALL follows Yosef, a spirited athlete, in Louisville, Kentucky as he dives into the memories of his journey from Iraq to America and what it means to chase his dreams in the shadow of a war that displaced his family from their Iraqi homeland.

Every year during summer one of the biggest battles of mankind takes place amidst the hillsides of middle earth. Knights, elves and magicians are fighting orcs and the dark powers. What looks like a scene from Lord of the Rings actually takes place in a field in Germany, where thousands of role players meet to plunge into a fantasy world of their own. More than 250.000 people in Germany regularly make this transition. The documentary accompanies five role players in their daily lives and their parallel ones. Where does their yearning for a shared world of fantasy come from? What does this reveal about our hectic, technological life? Sunday warriors is a film about the passion for playing and the ambition to exceed your limits.

Sometimes, finding your tribe requires a bit of magic. For attendees of a live action role-playing (LARP) camp in upstate New York, the deeply accepting environment has given neurodivergent, queer, and self-proclaimed "nerdy" teenagers the space and community for self-discovery that they have never found anywhere else. As the campers immerse themselves in this imaginative world, they discover inner strength, heal from past traumas, and emerge as the heroes they are meant to be, both in the fantasy realm and in real life.

Welcome to Monster Camp, the true story about a world where people transform into creatures, heroes, and monsters to escape their daily lives. In the vein of Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and Dungeons and Dragons; these enthusiasts have developed a complicated world to bring their fantasies to life. Romantic relationships are forged between characters. Friendships are destroyed over plot disputes. Characters are slain and never return. But keeping this world alive takes a lot of real world work. And unless someone is willing to take charge, the fantasy may be lost forever.

Examining the relationships between brother and sister, hetero and queer, male and female, this video weaves a provocative discussion between a Black lesbian and her straight brother. In an eloquent examination of desire and denial, Jocie attempts to make her brother acknowledge the violent face of homophobia recounting a time when she was attacked. Frankie candidly tells his sister about his own disempowering experiences as a Black man and recounts the time he tried to seduce her former lover. A candid and brilliant dialogue between family members.

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How does it feel when your brother, someone you felt to be the dearest, brightest and most important person in the world, suddenly decides to join an ultraconservative Catholic religious order? Whilst the two siblings had spent time at Christian summer camps – he at the Legionarios and she with the Consagradas – the members of both orders had always seemed rather odd to them. Her brother swore he would never join the Legionaries and that it didn’t interest him at all. Why did he break this pact, what happened to him?

The Dungeon Masters explores the subculture of role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, which for over 30 years has offered gamers the chance to escape their mundane lives and participate in a world they might otherwise never experience. Popularity and power are based on creativity and imagination rather than social status or wealth, and success is based not on who you know but on what you do.

An in-depth look into how the World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade created a phenomenon in the 1990s – a zeitgeist that helped shape film, literature, fashion, club culture, and ultimately fans, whose lives it forever altered.

Über Goober focuses on the often-misunderstood, sometimes-controversial, and always-kind-of-geeky world of Gamers. Director Steve Metze examines several different groups including historical miniature gamers, role-players, and those known simply as "LARPers." The film also explores opposition from religious groups, negative media portrayals, and some of the meanest 'man-on-the-street' interviews ever committed to video. Meet the Gamers, learn their exotic language, see their bizarre rituals, gasp at their semi-authentic costumes, and thrill to the painting techniques on their miniatures!

A documentary about three people with an extraordinary hobby: live Game (LARP). A weekend to be someone else, experience adventure, fight battles, be a child again; recovery from reality and yourself.

Caught between two worlds, one real and one imagined, three filmmakers have travelled 4000-miles across Europe to understand Live Action Role-Play (LARP), the hobby where these worlds collide. In its essence, LARP is an extension of how you experienced games as a child. When tabletop games grew too big for the board, players put down their dice, picked up their swords, and have been playing make-believe ever since. The culmination of years-old conversations in a local pub, Treasure Trapped is part-documentary, part-road movie; a film that charts the journey of Mike, Al and Nick, as they explore this often misunderstood pastime. Casting a unique look over a worldwide community that is known for its eccentricities, this project aspires to bring the hobby to the masses. Game on!

In this experimental documentary, a comedian’s break-up leads her to a surprising journey with a community of LARPers.

Meet Jon Gallagher, a LARPer with Asperger's syndrome, and see how LARPing helps him make friends, learn social skills, get a job, and in many ways, saves his life.

A coming of age saga about a 14-year old boy whose life alternates between the medieval fantasy kingdom of Adria and the real world trials of a challenging adolescence.

National Vampire is a feature-length documentary that explores vampire culture in the United States. To achieve this, the filmmakers spent more than two years traveling around the country, attending vampire-related events, and interviewing dozens of people involved in the vampire community. Shooting locations include a Vampire’s Ball held in New Orleans each Halloween, a vampire tour of San Francisco, and a New York City shop that “transforms” people into vampires. Also featured are a vampire “dentist” who makes fangs for a living, vampire role playing gamers in Dayton, Ohio, a vampire-themed magician, and a bloodthirsty Texas couple that claims to be the real thing. Going beyond the surface, National Vampire also explores a number of subcultures that overlap the vampire community, including the goth music scene, bondage and S&M, and blood fetishists who take part in piercing and full-body suspension rituals.

A walk through the life and career of the legendary French photojournalist Christine Spengler, known as Moonface, one of the few female war reporters in the seventies, also a writer and surrealist painter, who worked in Chad, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and other places where unfortunately war and death prevailed for years.

For some it's a cathartic release, and for others a means of escape, but for everyone who chooses to commit the time and expenses of doing it, Live-Action Role-Playing is addictive fun that allows fully grown adults to engage in the magical realm of make-believe-- a place that, as we all age, becomes increasingly less accessible.

An uncompromising and controversial short set in the Scandinavian suburbia on the hottest day of the summer. A sister reluctantly babysits her little brother. Two young boys catch her attention, and she makes a crucial decision.