2022/08/08

A Meta-Documentary About the Looping Labour of NPCs Wins Best Direction at Locarno Film Festival

An ethnographic exploration of the work and daily life of non-playable characters, Total Refusal’s meta-documentary Hardly Working premieres (and wins best direction) at Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland. The film follows four digital extras—a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, a handyman—toiling away in the videogame Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). “Their labour loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.”

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$40 USD