Life 2.0

Life 2.0 is one of the films featured in 'On the Edge' - a new section of programming at this year’s Documentary Edge Festival that includes a selection of daring, provocative and sometimes controversial documentaries that are on the cusp of filmmaking.

The Festival is on in Auckland (February 17– March 6) and Wellington (March 10 – 27).

USA 2010 / 100min.
Director Jason Spingarn-Koff.
Producers Andrew Lauren, Stephan Paternot.

Every day, across all corners of the globe, hundreds of thousands of users log onto Second Life and enter a virtual world. There are no goals or quests and is literally a world where you can establish a Second Life.

Your avatar goes about the normal things that people do in life. You can buy things, homes, clothes, cars, anything you can imagine. You can bowl, swim, dance and even have sex. It’s a way to escape, to start again, to have a life in a world without responsibility or outside pressure. It’s like a glossy, digital clean slate.

Director Spingarn-Koff’s filmmaker avatar straps on a digital camera and immerses himself in Second Life where he meets residents, many of whom have real lives drastically transformed by their new virtual lives.

Woven into the Second Life computer footage is verité footage that shows us the stories behind the avatars. The couple falling in love? Two people whose torrid affair will rip their lives apart. The entrepreneur? A woman whose online success has freed her from her offline job. That little girl? Well, she’s a he, a man struggling to bridge the gap between his first life relationship with his fiancé and his Second Life obsession.

Documentary Edge Festival 2011 | On the Edge