"Thank You for Playing" screening

UF Art + Technology and the Digital Worlds Institute presents the documentary film “Thank You for Playing” followed by a discussion with filmmakers David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall.

"Thank You for Playing" is a film that chronicles the day-to-day challenges of Ryan and Amy Green as they grapple with the illness of their son Joel, who has suffered from cancer since the age of one. With the challenge of creating some normalcy for their family of five, they find some solace in creating a tribute to him, a haunting video game “That Dragon, Cancer” that captures both his voice and their experiences, both happy and sad, over the four-year period of his illness. The resulting documentary explores how video game design can be a way to humanize terminal illness, and also grapples with the distinctions between art and gaming in following the reception of this “game” in the gaming community.

This event is second in an eight-part speaker series called Death: Confronting the Great Divide. This series invites nationally renowned scholars and filmmakers to explore unique cultural and historical confrontations with death.

David Osit is a documentary film director, editor, and composer. His work has appeared in places such as HBO, NBC, PBS, TLC, Al-Jazeera America, Channel4, Arte, VICE, and Wired. David’s first feature documentary film Building Babel, which he produced, directed, shot, edited and composed, was a recipient of ITVS Open Call funding, broadcast as the series premiere of PBS America Reframed in 2013, and played at film festivals worldwide. David was co-producer and composer for Where Heaven Meets Hell (IDFA, Hot Docs), which broadcast on PBS Global Voices in 2013. David is a recipient of the Anthony Rhodes Vice Presidential Scholarship and received his MFA in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Malika Zouhali-Worrall is an award-winning director, producer and editor of British/Moroccan origin. She is one of the directors and the producer ofCall Me Kuchu (2012), a documentary that depicts the last year in the life of the first openly gay man in Uganda, David Kato. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and the Cinema Fairbindet Prize. Malika is a Chaz & Roger Ebert Directing Fellow and an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab, the Tribeca All Access program, the Firelight Producers Lab, and the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant. Malika is a graduate of Cambridge University, and holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

For more on the video game, please visit: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/that-dragon-cancer/.

On the documentary “Thank You For Playing," please visit: http://www.thankyouforplayingfilm.com/.

For more information about the series, please visit: www.humanities.ufl.edu/calendar-2016-17-Speaker-Series.html.

For directions to the REVE, please visit: digitalworlds.ufl.edu/directions/reve/.

Room #

PICT

Address

624 SW 12th Street
Gainesville
FL 32611

Phone

352-294-2000

Website

Digital Worlds Institute Website