Level Five

Join us on e-flux Video & Film for an online screening of Chris Marker’s Level Five (1997), on view from Tuesday, February 23 through Monday, March 8, 2021.

A programmer, Laura inherits the task of making a computer game featuring the Battle of Okinawa that took place in Japan during WWII. She searches the internet for information on the battle, and interviews experts and witnesses while trying to get to the most difficult level of the game,—level 5—of the computer program left behind by her husband. The extraordinary circumstances of the Battle of Okinawa lead Laura to reflect deeply on her own life and on humanity facing its traumatic history, mediated by screens. Level Five addresses digital exteriorization of memories and alteration of intersubjective connections in the early age of virtual communication.

Level Five is presented here as one of four films in Part Two | Virtually Yours, the second of five programs in the online series True Fake: Troubling the Real in Artists' Films programmed by Lukas Brasiskis for e-flux Video & Film.

True Fake runs from February 9 through April 19, 2021. The films in each part will screen for two weeks. Subsequent parts will follow bi-weekly, with new films screened every other Tuesday.

Level Five is presented with kind permission of Icarus Films, a founding content partner of Ovid TV, currently featuring a collection of Chris Marker titles. A free trial subscription is available here.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.