FOOD & FOOTAGE – Independent movies in combination with food

11 JUNE 2025 / starting 19:00

ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany

At Food & Footage, filmmakers, artists and chefs come together to combine moving images with a three-course meal and thus bring current social, cultural and political topics to the table.

Digital - urbanist performance Virtual Ritual by Czech theatre maker Jan Mocek  invites the audience into the immersive world of online multiplayer games, reflecting on how virtual spaces mirror our real cities. Blending theatre performance, documentary, and digital aesthetics, the piece examines the social codes, urban structures, and behaviors that define digital societies. Through a shared meal inspired by the performance, we continue this exploration at the table — questioning the rules we live by, online and offline. After the performance follows a discussion with artists and audience.

Why mess with everyday obstacles, horrible news, disasters distant or present, mine or yours, when you can live an unconstrained life, here and now, free of it all? When can you live in the place where the American dream can actually come true? In a city where when you get killed in the street you simply respawn in another neighbourhood? Who cares about the real world anyway? We don't want to play this game anymore! Virtual Ritual is an original gaming performance that takes you on a digital urbanist trip through the virtual city of an online video game. It is an exploration of a digital society formed by millions of people around the world who log into the vast gaming world every day. There are rules to a game, though, and this one is no exception. Also, virtual cities quite often resemble real ones.
Urbanist Osamu Okamura, YouTuber Atlet, photographer and gamer Adéla Vosičková: an expert gaming panel unpacks hidden mechanisms, prototypes and rituals that shape the seemingly weightless world of MMOs. What norms, rules, and codes are allowed to surpass? How is the digital city designed to mediate the proper urban experience? How do digital citizens actually live? And what happens when we mistake virtual for real and vice versa? Virtual Ritual is a daring promise to the audience: after watching our show your city will never be the same to you.