At the Dream Emu­la­tor Film Club, the bound­aries between video games and cin­e­ma no longer exist

Dur­ing the inau­gur­al Dream Emu­la­tor Film Club, I repeat­ed­ly found myself ask­ing ​“Where am I?” Lit­er­al­ly speak­ing, I was sit­ting in the base­ment screen beneath Dalston’s Rio Cin­e­ma, but it felt as if I was lost in a vir­tu­al waste­land. Screen­ing – in the words of organ­is­er Rosa PMS – ​“eso­teric video games” Dream Emu­la­tor Film Club is a mind-bend­ing night of psy­che­del­ic odd­i­ties where the lines between ani­ma­tion, film, gam­ing, and more are demolished.

This is no Wood­stock tie-dyed hang­out. Dream Emu­la­tor is clos­er to hav­ing a lucid bad trip, end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing but requir­ing sta­mi­na. After the event, I emailed Rosa, des­per­ate to know how to clas­si­fy the footage she screened. ​“I’m not sure how I’d clas­si­fy it if I’m being hon­est”, she replied, ​“a game­play expe­ri­ence or showreel might make the most sense.” Her response echoed my own uncer­tain­ty. The term genre-defy­ing gets thrown about a lot, but the two games/​films on show here cer­tain­ly fit the bill.

LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor was the main event, so much so that the club is named after it. Con­ceived by Japan­ese artist Osamu Sato for the PlaySta­tion, this game (in the loos­est sense) sees the play­er walk through lim­i­nal spaces inspired by the dream diary of an employ­ee at Asmik Ace, pub­lish­er of the game.

Dur­ing the screen­ing, a selec­tion of clips showed play­ers weav­ing through worlds braid­ed togeth­er by bitmapped tex­tures, psy­chotrop­ic colours, and trig­gers acti­vat­ing ran­domised tele­por­ta­tion. Fea­tur­ing polyg­o­nal designs, frag­men­tary spaces, and uncan­ny abom­i­na­tions, such as a giant, green baby’s head, LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor feels more like a haunt­ed bowl­ing alley ani­ma­tion than a video game. At times, it felt as if the pix­e­lat­ed acres on-screen bled into reality.

LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor is a tough act to fol­low, but 2:22AM is a fit­ting com­pan­ion piece. Devel­oped by Alice Lai, 2:22AM has the play­er stum­ble through creepy back­rooms doused in VHS-style grain. This makes for a view­ing expe­ri­ence more chill­ing than the dizzy­ing LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor, helped by sin­is­ter phras­es, such as ​“noth­ing ends”, book­end­ing some seg­ments. It is essen­tial­ly Inland Empire meets Slen­der­man – an unnerv­ing mix – while LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor is an expe­ri­ence which tran­scends eeriness.

There are echoes of expand­ed cin­e­ma in both games; a move­ment which utilised film as art as part of the Amer­i­can under­ground cin­e­ma scene in the ​‘60s. The galac­tic struc­tures in Jor­dan Belson’s Allures and Samad­hi, for exam­ple, envel­op view­ers in psy­che­del­ic envi­ron­ments much like LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor. Mean­while, Storm de Hirsch’s Pey­ote Queen, a fre­net­ic assem­blage of kalei­do­scop­ic images, echoes the hyper­link­ing ener­gy and sur­re­al imagery in both games shown at the club. Both films and games riff off of stac­ca­to rhythms, much like Beat poets of yes­ter­year, while the coun­ter­cul­tur­al ​“hap­pen­ings” put on by The Vel­vet Under­ground and acid pro­po­nent Ken Kesey embraced mul­ti­me­dia just like the film club.

Yet the heady mix of man­dalas and mescalin in expand­ed cin­e­ma doesn’t cap­ture the unhinged eccen­tric­i­ty of the Dream Emu­la­tor Club. Even the label of cin­e­ma feels like a dilu­tion. Attempt­ing to plug the square peg of Dream Emu­la­tor into the round hole of film, or any sin­gu­lar art­form, proves to be a fruit­less endeav­our. These films/​games are on anoth­er lev­el, far-flung from the pre­vi­ous­ly poor track record of video games on the big screen.

Trans­lat­ing joy­sticks into jump cuts has result­ed in infa­mous­ly dis­ap­point­ing out­comes in main­stream cin­e­ma. Through­out the ​‘90s and 2000s, the likes of Paul W.S. Ander­son and Uwe Boll churned out schlocky, low-effort game-to-film adap­ta­tions. Seem­ing­ly igno­rant to the poten­tial of games as an art form, Hol­ly­wood waved through games from arcade machines to cin­e­ma screens with lit­tle thought on if, why or how they should be made as movies. The inser­tion of ran­dom clips from the House of the Dead games into Boll’s film adap­ta­tion is just one of many clum­sy com­bi­na­tions attempt­ing to fuse games with films.

Although adap­ta­tions like Son­ic the Hedge­hog and Poké­mon: Detec­tive Pikachu have recent­ly upped the grade-point aver­age of video game films to a C, it is prof­itable pop­u­lar IP which moti­vates new adap­ta­tions rather than an inter­est in gam­ing as art and how it might inter­sect with film. The poten­tial of gam­ing has been wast­ed on the big screen, com­pact­ed into pre­sentable offer­ings of main­stream enter­tain­ment to sus­tain false hier­ar­chies of qual­i­ty between media forms.

This explains my dis­ori­en­ta­tion at Dream Emu­la­tor, an event which breaks the mould by, final­ly, exper­i­ment­ing with film and gam­ing as equals. Yes, the screen­ing was visu­al­ly per­plex­ing, but its form was even more so, cir­cum­vent­ing main­stream cin­e­ma exhi­bi­tion­ism by offer­ing a psy­che­del­ic event intent on break­ing bound­aries between art forms and beyond. In her email, Rosa notes, ​“how inter­twined these par­tial­ly beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences are with queer and trans game devel­op­ers”. The worlds of LSD: Dream Emu­la­tor and 2:22AM are often over­whelm­ing, but they also shim­mer, shift­ing between plains of rain­bow iri­des­cence, sim­i­lar to Ken­neth Anger’s homo­erot­i­cal­ly charged film Fire­works. These worlds are flu­id and unre­strict­ed by par­ti­tions, speak­ing to queer and trans expe­ri­ences through exper­i­men­ta­tion with form. Both the vir­tu­al worlds and the club exhibit­ing them are safe spaces, cel­e­brat­ing the work of queer and trans peo­ple, like Alice Lai, whilst top­pling unnec­es­sary hier­ar­chies between media. Defi­ant­ly not mere cine­plex amuse­ment, Dream Emu­la­tor offers some­thing dif­fer­ent for peo­ple who have been labelled as such.

A com­plete­ly unique event, Dream Emu­la­tor Film Club stands at the precipice of a change in film, gam­ing, ani­ma­tion, and beyond, tak­ing the video game adap­ta­tion into the realms of exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma, and poten­tial­ly doing away with media forms entire­ly. With VR tech­nol­o­gy steadi­ly improv­ing, who knows what this event could be like in the future? Just turn on, tune in, and drop out.

Dream Emu­la­tor Film Club con­venes month­ly at the Rio Cin­e­ma in London.