The French Democracy is a political film about France's riots, made in machinima (a filmmaking technique that uses video-games as animation engines) with the new video game The Movies — a game whose objective is to make machinima films.
The French Democracy is a little rough around the edges, unashamedly political and one-sided, and could use some work on the pacing, but it's also a stirring piece of political filmmaking, created using a $50 piece of software intended to enable its users to become one-person animation auteurs.
Most machnima is silly, or porny, or violent — but this is real political stuff, the kind of thing the First Amendment was invented for. It's a real milestone in machinima history.
Link
(Thanks, Hugh!)
Update: Tony sez, "I think it's important
to know that movies made with 'The Movies' are subject to Activision's EULA,
which asserts Activision's exclusive copyrights in all of its original
content. Since user-created movies seem to require at least *some* of
Activision's copyrights (3D character models and/or environments at minimum), the
DCMA could probably be used to take down movies. This might be of note if
Activision doesn't agree with the content of political machinima made with
'The Movies.'"
