The Women’s Adventure Film Tour first premiered to a sold-out crowd in Sydney, Australia in May 2017. Since then, the film tour has left its home country and toured across Asia, Europe and North America. This spring, it is coming to Eastern Canada with a stop at Hamilton’s historic Playhouse Cinema on March 21.
The tour celebrates the extraordinary adventures of women by putting on a selection of short films. It is the result of a partnership between Australian company Adventure Film Tours and women-centred outdoors community She Went Wild. The Hamilton screening is open to all and will be two hours long with a short intermission. There will be also be raffle and door prizes offered.
Eastern Canada tour organizer, Benoit Brunet-Poirier got involved with the tour when he met Adventure Film Tours owner Toby Ryston-Pratt on a trip to Australia last year. At the time, Ryston-Pratt had been thinking about expanding to Canada. Brunet-Poirier discussed the opportunity with his partner Jamie Stewart and the two decided to take on the challenge of bringing the film tour home.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9HXWDFs4WM[/embedyt]
Adventure is important for the couple, who met while rock-climbing. The tour also combines their respective industries as Brunet-Poirier works in the entertainment industry and Stewart works for an outdoors retailer.
By showing women-centred films, the tour is helping break down barriers in the outdoors industry. Brunet-Poirier noted that women are historically thought of as individuals to be protected and this series of short films challenges that notion.
“So I really like the idea of having a woman-focused film tour just because… although women are starting to be represented more in adventure stores and in the media and in film, I do think that there still is a misrepresentation or underrepresentation of women. And so this film tour is just putting… the spotlight on women,” Stewart said.
The couple did their first screening for the film tour in Ottawa last fall. They are taking the feedback from that event on the road by increasing the number of films in order to show a few shorter ones and playing well-received flicks.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DE3F336tVQ[/embedyt]
One such film, titled Finding the Line, follows professional skiers and sisters Anna and Nat Segal across Canada, France and the United States. While the film’s humour and thrilling 80 degree slopes make it an exciting watch, it is one of Stewart’s personal favourites because of its narratives of overcoming fear and sisterly bonding. It is these narratives that Stewart and Brunet-Poirier feel will resonate with audiences.
“We let go of some films that were focused on physical achievement to give room to films that are focused on the psychological or social achievement of other women. So there are films about BASE jumping and extreme sports, but there are also films that are more accessible,” said Brunet-Poirier.
In this way, the films should provide something that appeals to everyone, regardless of activity level or interest in extreme sports. The couple hopes that the pictures inspire audiences of all ages to attempt new things or take on a challenge that frightens them.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcWXn_Ydxuc[/embedyt]
Stewart and Brunet-Poirier also focused on ensuring that the films showcases diversity. From a film about an older, blind woman learning to swim for the first time to another about the challenges a lesbian couple faces in a mountain biking community when they open a pizza shop, the films capture a range of identities.
The films were selected from Adventure Films Tours’ global database. While the couple chose some films based in North America in order to be more local, their priority on diversity led them to select films from around the world.
“I am a Chinese woman here in Canada and… we really wanted to showcase diversity and acceptance of everyone… [T]hat's the root of our cause. [We] really try to reach as many people as we can and showing representation in adventure sports of all types of people,” said Stewart.
By centring the diversity of women, Women’s Adventure Film Tour pushes back against the perception of the outdoors community as male-dominated or predominantly white. The films aim to be a comprehensive show of the physical and mental strength of women.
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Firewatch is hands-down one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever encountered. I’d checked it out with zero idea what it would be about and what to expect, but the graphics of the start menu alone was all the convincing I needed to continue on.
Firewatch is categorized under “first person adventure,” and it follows a fire lookout named Henry on his first few days on the job. The story is jump-started by the disappearance of two teenage girls in the forest, and it’s up to the player to deal with the puzzle this leaves to be solved. This is the first game from Campo Santo, a developer founded by the two leads from Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead game series. That alone already says its fair share about the game. The dialogue in the game operates almost the same way as Walking Dead — a character says something, and you, as player, get to choose what to do or say next in response. Except Firewatch takes it a step farther, making for an adventure game that’s startlingly immersive in its take on a first-person perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZX3MgsRb0A
The first-person perspective was chosen primarily to save on the costs that come with having to sync voice actors with their character counterparts, but the decision seems to have ultimately worked out in Firewatch’s favour. Playing as Henry, the game operates in a way that makes it look like you’re seeing through his eyes. When you look down, you see Henry’s hands and feet as if they were your own. The player only catches glimpses of what Henry is supposed to look like, and otherwise, for all intents and purposes, you are Henry, and his character is completely yours to experience the game through. As Henry, the player interacts with fellow lookout Delilah only via walkie-talkies, and while this sounds dull, it’s Henry and Delilah’s interactions that really make the game stand out. It’s one thing for it to look great, but with some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in a game and perfectly cast voice actors, Firewatch sounds great, too. It’s simultaneously funny and poignant, and at times even relatable. The absence of a mental image to match Henry and Delilah’s voice behind the witty banter is a huge plus. This, coupled with the realistic graphics and being able to pick between response choices that range from emotional to dryly hilarious, it’s a game that feels very, very real in all aspects. Importantly so, since Firewatch doesn’t hold back on the tragic backstories, either.
The first ten minutes of the game alone loads up on Henry’s own emotional background. And it’s worth noting that while this is quickly established and explored throughout the game, it does so without being overdramatic. Firewatch maintains its realism through and through, handling its story and its few characters without being too much nor being too little. It comfortably juggles the drama, the clever banter, the unraveling mystery and the action behind the main storyline, and in my book, any game that can pull that off while sticking to its own personal charm is worth playing.
That said, Firewatch’s one flaw, as noted by many players and critics, is its ending. The game builds itself up to be something dark and gritty, and while in some ways, it does reach that point, it only scratches the surface before descending back to what is a criminally anti-climactic ending. It’s not terrible, per se, but it’s the kind of ending that really makes you go: Wait, what? Is that it? Really? And that’s quite unfortunate for a game that never prompts those questions anywhere else.
Firewatch makes for a great experience largely thanks to the environment it immerses the player in — the woods look shockingly realistic no matter which route you take, and the dialogue is brilliant and satisfying to the very last syllable. While the ending leaves much to be desired, it’s a quick little game that’s relaxing and escapist in its own charming right, and for that, it deserves a play.
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Transitioning from Telltale’s episodic The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, I went into Life Is Strange not entirely sure what to expect. The premise was simple: an interactive adventure game played from the perspective of photography student Max Caulfield. However, it throws time travel and the butterfly effect into the mix to make one of the most intriguing games I’ve encountered this year.
The game is set in the fictional town of Arcadia Bay, where protagonist Max is in her last year of high school at Blackwell Academy. The episodes take place over the course of one week in October 2013, and the first episode opens with Max’s discovery of a sudden ability to rewind time. This, I discover later, allows me as a player to redo virtually any action I take in the game. While that sounds like a welcome contrast to games where you have to watch your character fade off behind a “Game Over” screen, Life Is Strange is quick to remind its players that it isn’t as nice and convenient as it seems.
The butterfly effect is heavily incorporated into the gameplay, and I learn early on that each of my choices, no matter which one I pick and how many times I rewind time, may have long-term consequences. In this sense, there’s a blurry line between the right and wrong choice, and instead, I’m left nervously waiting for my own choice to backfire on me. This, I believe, contributes most to the intrigue of the game. Instead of being given the chance to truly start over from scratch, you suffer through the possibility of being wrong. It’s a feature that allows the player to be deeply involved, and to have an emotional attachment that’s not purely to the character you’re playing the game through. There’s a connection to the storyline brought by the knowledge that it is your choices that are shaping the story, and that any of your actions can influence how the game will ultimately play out for you.
We also get a glimpse of potential themes in the game, an element I appreciate in a storyline featuring adolescents. The teenage aspect is strong and constant, and it’s nice to see that playing through Max actually feels like being in the mind of a teenage girl. She’s not perfect, and when you are making choices through her, you get to truly experience the uncertainty and frustration that would come if you were to make those same choices in real life. Some of the conversations throughout the game feel stilted and nuanced, but the emotional undercurrent remains present in the implications that grow stronger as more is revealed of the central characters.
Online reviews criticize the awkward dialogue and the lack of lip-syncing, but these are issues that can be easily overlooked once you get into the storyline. The only problem I found with Life Is Strange is that, for a game heavily relying on choices and consequences, there isn’t always a wide variety of decisions to pick and choose from. If there’s anything to be truly frustrated by in this first episode, it’s that you’re awarded the freedom to choose, and yet trapped by options that are at some points too rigid and black-and-white. There may be game conventions to follow, but there are quite a few scenes — Max’s interactions with other Blackwell students, especially — that could have been designed better.
Nevertheless, I am hopeful for the next few episodes of Life Is Strange. There is a lot of room left for character development, and it’s exciting to anticipate what the rest of the game has in store. It’s early on in the storyline, and the game has done well thus far considering the experimental TV series format. It’s a fantasy world that’s fresh and interesting despite its clichéd flaws, and if anything, it has definitely captured my attention. The first episode has set up an interesting world left to be explored, and has shown signs of subverting video game archetypes. The next few instalments will establish whether the game can follow through on these promises.
After all, who doesn’t want to live vicariously every now and then through a time-traveling high school student?
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