A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Original Title:
Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Time
Genres:
Documentary
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 124
Since March 2020, Draxtor has been following UC Irvine Department of Anthropology researchers Tom Boellstorff, Evan Conaway, Chandra Middleton and Sandy Wenger around Animal Crossing and Second Life to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping online interaction. In the film, protagonists from all over the world open up about their anxieties and everyday challenges during the last two years, and share what virtual worlds and social games mean to them in the context of a global health crisis. Many hours of mixed reality interviews, group discussions in Second Life and a comprehensive survey filled out by over 4000 players/residents provide the basis for a sprawling narrative. What emerges through participant observation is a mosaic of impressions, voices and worlds belonging to people from all walks of life, who are actively engaging in community building in the digital realm as they are trying to make sense of a new age dominated by uncertainty and physical isolation.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.