By Daniel Moshel
Centered around two people homebound by their disabilities who have found community online, LOGIN 2 LIFE explores the growing number of people who spend much of their lives in online virtual worlds.
Elaborate digital platforms like Second Life and World of Warcraft offer novel opportunities for friendship, sex, employment, and aesthetic experience in virtual communities populated by cartoon-like avatars. While these simulated worlds are often treated with contempt by the general media, LOGIN 2 LIFE takes a more sympathetic approach, profiling seven people deeply immersed in these worlds, and attempting to understand what each gets from their virtual life.
Paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident, 27 year-old Corey spends most of his days playing World of Warcraft, exploring a virtual landscape with far greater ease than he can move through his physical one. Alice, 60, has limited mobility due to multiple sclerosis. In Second Life, she is able to draw on her skills as an educator and volunteer to run an in-game business that provides resources to other disabled people.
We also meet a diverse cast of characters from around the world, whose different online engagements illustrate the range of motivations for choosing a largely virtual existence. Kevin, a middle-aged family man in Florida, makes his living selling virtual sex devices within the Second Life universe. Philippe, in France, is an award-winning director of World of Warcraft machinima who has turned is hobby into a career. In China, a family of World of Warcraft "gold farmers" toil endlessly online, earning in-game currency that can be sold for real money.
LOGIN 2 LIFE reconsiders the demarcation usually drawn between physical and online worlds. The film asks us to consider whether the people we have met are exceptions, driven to digital immersion by particular needs, or if they are pioneers of a lifestyle that will soon become commonplace.
Reviews
~ "Captures the essence of online community and real relationships in cyberspace...LOGIN 2 LIFE is not the first documentary to portray and examine how people interact online, but it is one of the first to demonstrate the positive possibilities." - TILT Magazine
~ "An impressive feat...director Daniel Moshel refrained from portraying his subjects as freaks or clowns for the audience to laugh at. Instead, he unpacks their motivations and desires in a way that pulls you into their stories." - Betterverse
Award
~ Premiere, 2012 Festival of Audiovisual Programs (FIPA), France
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