{4\/5} “The more I pulled on threads, the more the lines were blurred between what I viewed as the insanity I was… experiencing and the insanity of the real world.”<\/p>\n
A few years ago in San Francisco something unusual happened. Posters started appearing that led people to a particular building where they would be “inducted.” But inducted into what? It turns out that a bunch of people were involved in an intricate game of sorts, following clues like a scavenger hunt. Some people described it as an “urban playground movement” or “alternate reality game.” And some people took it more seriously.<\/p>\n
The Institute<\/strong> was released in 2013. It’s a documentary.<\/p>\n To tell the story of this unique phenomenon the filmmakers interview the creator of the game, Jeff Hull, as well as a bunch of participants. They also show footage taken while people were playing the game.<\/p>\n Who are the participants? People who think this sort of thing is fun — who are willing to do things that might look silly or maybe even a bit dangerous, who are interested in the blurring of fantasy and reality.<\/p>\n After a couple of years the game was brought to a close, with the participants brought together for a seminar. Some people were disappointed with the conclusion but that might have been inevitable given all the build-up.<\/p>\n Some parts of the movie are more interesting than others, but it’s certainly an intriguing concept.<\/p>\n The documentary gives you a glimpse into the strangeness of what it must have been like to participate in the game. Apparently more than 10 000 people participated in it.<\/p>\n The movie was directed by Spencer McCall (the documentary short Rodeo’s Are Special<\/strong>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" {4\/5} “The more I pulled on threads, the more the lines were blurred between what I viewed as the insanity I was… experiencing and the insanity of the real world.” A few years ago in San Francisco something unusual happened. Posters started appearing that led people to a particular building where they would be “inducted.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[43,6,5],"class_list":["post-5120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-documentaries","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5120"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5127,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions\/5127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}