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Hardly Working film image, co-directors Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf)

Hardly Working

North American Premiere

Total Refusal returns to MODES with new work following 2020’s dazzling live performance of Operation Jane Walk, and their anti-war masterpiece, How to Disappear. In the moments when the algorithm of their existence shows inconsistencies, the Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) of the popular action-adventure game, Red Dead Redemption, break out of their routines momentarily to display their faultiness and present something touchingly human.

Director
Cast

Jacob Banigan

Credits
Country of Origin

Austria

Year

2022

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
21 min

Featured in:

Perforated Realities film image, director Gustaf Broms

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Whimsical, questioning and utterly absorbing, a collection of animated work delving into worlds of wonder, subversion, and Marxist mystery. These works are fun and some re-construct ideas of animation, paying homage to experimentalists who came before.

 

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Credits

Screenwriter

Total Refusal

Cinematography

Total Refusal

Editor

Total Refusal

Original Music

Adrian Haim

Director

Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf) group shot, Hardly Working co-directors

Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf)

The pseudo-marxist media guerilla collective Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. They work with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Their films and performances were presented among others at the Berlinale and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They received the award for Best Short Documentary Film at the 2020 Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film.