thinfilms

Regardless of who we are, where we grew up or what our situation is, we all played this game, by names familiar and strange and by an infinite assortment of rules. Both under the Sun and the Moon, with friends new and old, we learned about our strengths, our weaknesses and were introduced to our identity for the first time through this seemingly simple ritual.

For two years I collected candid interviews with people from all over the world regarding the way they grew up playing “tag”, the names they had for it and their stories surrounding this game that literally touches everything we do. Out of that experience, I distilled this brief odyssey that attempts to capture the essence of a complex, yet simple and overlooked, part of who we are.

Tag and our own memories of it wash over us as we spend a few moments with experts from the Jane Goodall Institute, the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota and the International Play Association who discuss the essential role play has in our development as a culture and as individuals, while the sights and sounds reconnect us with our capacity for play - the catalyst that leads us to “bootstrap moments” of whimsy, discovery and creation.

The film was only recently completed, having only screened on PBS thus far. If you have any interest to see it in its entirety [the film takes as long to watch as it does to play a game of it] or screen it at your festival or event, please inquire. There is no fee. This work about play was intended only as a labor of love.

Meanwhile, please click here to see silent films I made with 7-year-olds or some of the other work I had the privilege of creating with kids during my artist-in-residency at the Benjamin Franklin International School in Barcelona during March and April 2009.

Perhaps you’d simply prefer to view my demo reel or my blog.

Keep playing.

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