New York Premiere
Playing the News
| USA | 20 MINUTES | EnglishDocumentary
Can video games do journalism? This is the question posed by Playing the News, which examines the role played by video game company Kuma War in connecting young people to current events, particularly the war in Iraq. After designing a video game based on the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, Kuma War began to think of itself as a news organization. But war reporting has certainly never looked like this before.
Cast & Credits
Directed by
Jeff Plunkett, Ishai Setton, and Jigar Mehta
Jeff Plunkett and Jigar Mehta produced Playing the News at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where it won the Currie Documentary Prize. They previously collaborated on Homeland Insecurity. A Princeton graduate, Plunkett is a Current TV producer in San Francisco. He has written for Time Asia, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the South China Morning Post. Before journalism school, he taught English in China. Mehta is a seasoned cameraperson and editor whose reports from Kashmir, Mauritania, and Sri Lanka have aired on NBC, ABC, and HBO. His work includes the Emmy Award-winning documentary, My Flesh and Blood.