Darkon

2007 • 90 minutes

À propos de ce film

DARKON covers an epic war raging through the realm of Darkon (an American LARP based outside of Baltimore). Skip Lipman, a suburban stay-at-home dad, leads his rebel army in a monumental quest to topple a mighty empire and lead the Realm to new era of liberty and glory. The documentary investigates the LARPers’ lives in the game and out of the game offering insight into the players complex relationship with fantasy and reality. The film is set to the backdrop of the real war then taking place in Iraq, highlighting the American cultural disconnect prevalent during the Bush era wars. DARKON, beloved for its light-hearted romp in the quirky imaginations of suburban Americans, has also been a point of reference as an ethnographic study of our relationship with escapism, war and fantasy.

Notes et avis

Darkon is a surprisingly gripping documentary on the Live Action Role Playing (LARP) community. It looks at the players, the game they play and the effects of the game on each of them. It is very well filmed being both sympathetic and not unrealistic to it's subjects. Like other nerd hobby documentaries like King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters (which tackles arcade cabinet video games) it does establish a hero and a villain and like the other documentary you get the impression that the subjects not only play into their characters but that they play to the camera too. It's a far far more compelling documentary than it has any right to be.

I thought it was a cool different take on something that people don't understand very well. It seems like a fun hobby to larp and seeing people talk about it you can see why they enjoy it.