hot docs: dreamworld / my second life

this was the north american premiere of both dreamworld and my second life. jorien van nes’ dreamworld tells the story of patrick, a 30 year old man living in the netherlands who spends most of his time playing second life, the online virtual world that has been gaining popularity recently. he describes creating an online avatar and the process of creating a second life identity. we meet patrick’s wife, danielle, who also spends a great deal of time in second life. cut between this story, are interviews with two other women living in the u.s. one of these women, christine, is patrick’s online girlfriend and he is planning a trip to meet her in real life. his wife also has an online boyfriend and so allows him to make this trip. once patrick arrives in the u.s., we witness how awkward their interactions are. at the end of the weekend, patrick discusses how the trip was not what he expected, while looking clearly disappointed. the films running time was only 30 minutes and i think had it been longer, van nes could have focused more on the implications second life has on the increasingly indistinguishable boundaries between reality and fantasy. while patrick had clearly functional distinct lives in reality, with his wife danielle, and in fantasy, with christine, when he tried to bring his fantasy life into reality, the two did not easily mesh. i think dreamworld is important because it’s one of our first forays into the effects of our culture entering into more and more virtual and online social networks, and as a result moving away from personal and physical interactions.

douglas gayeton’s my second life is the first documentary to be shot entirely in second life. the premise is that a california man named molotov alva went missing and director, gayeton discovered diaries of this man who chose to leave his real world existence behind and “entirely” live in second life. the documentary within a documentary is told from alva’s perspective in what is a problematic conflating of the real and fantasy worlds. granted these concepts are philosophically very interesting, i found gayeton’s approach to be superficial and pretentious. throughout the film, quotes from philosophers and various intellectuals are used to blatantly further these lofty ideas, while not actually expanding upon them, in what seems an attempt to deceive the audience into thinking gayeton is more insightful than he actually is. afterwards, these suspicions were confirmed at the q&a where gayeton came across as highly arrogant about the “truth” of his documentary.