Bujalski's film scooped the coveted Alfred P. Sloan award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, given to a feature that honours the theme of science and/or technology. Computer Chess went on to play at Berlin and SXSW. Our own Brian Clark caught the film's European premiere in Germany, where he praised it as "a relaxed, fascinating and often hilarious couple of days in the lives of of an eccentric group of digital warriors." Read Brian's full review here. Fans of the Masters of Cinema series should also note that, barring any subsequent announcements, Computer Chess would be the newest film to-date to be added into the collection.
From the press release:
A boldly intelligent ensemble comedy with a feel and atmosphere that surpass easy comparison, Computer Chess takes place in the early-1980s over the course of a weekend conference where a group of obsessive software programmers have convened to pit their latest refinements in machine-chess and the still-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI) against an assembly of human chess masters.Computer Chess is a portrait not only of the crazy and surreal relationships that come to pass between the abundance of characters who participate in the weekend event (and among whose ranks include Wiley Wiggins, the revered indie-game developer and star of Richard Linklater's classic Dazed and Confused), but of the very era of early computing itself - and of the first, rudimentary video games - and (if that weren't enough) of the hopes and insecurities that persisted through the film's "retro" digital age into the present-day -- that semi-virtual, hyper-social, maybe-kind-of-dehumanised landscape that, let's face it, is our very own 2013. If that still weren't enough: it's also one of the wittiest, most shift-and-cringe-in-your-seat, and entirely LOL-hilarious movies of recent times.
"The UK has been great to me and my films in the past," states Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski, "and I couldn't be more delighted to be bringing Computer Chess there with the (intimidatingly named!) Masters of Cinema series. I hope that means that they've mastered cinema -- I'm still, uh, working on that... And my education certainly wouldn't be complete if I didn't try to make at least one bizarre, left-field, mindbender movie -- Computer Chess is that. I'm eager to get it to British audiences."
Check out the film's festival trailer below: