''Darkon'' is a feature-length

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

that follows the real-life adventures of the

Darkon Wargaming Club The Darkon Wargaming Club is a non-profit battle gaming and live-action role-playing (LARP) club in the United States based in the Baltimore/Washington/Virginia area. Founded in 1985 and built upon the rules of the now-defunct ''Emarthnguarth ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, Maryland, a group of fantasy live-action role-playing (LARP) gamers. The film was directed by Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer. ''Darkon'' premiered and won the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2006 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Darkon was an official selection playing at Hot Docs,

Maryland Film Festival The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day international film festival taking place each May in Baltimore, Maryland. The festival was launched in 1999, and presents international film and video work of all lengths and genres. The festival ...

Silverdocs The AFI Docs (formerly Silverdocs) documentary film festival is an American international film festival created by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel. It is held every year in Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Starte ...

LA Film Festival The LA Film Festival was an annual film festival that was held in Los Angeles, California, and usually took place in June. It showcased independent, international, feature, documentary and short films, as well as web series, music videos, epis ...

, Britdoc, Melbourne International Film Festival and the

Camden International Film Festival The Camden International Film Festival, stylized as CIFF, is an annual documentary film festival based in Camden, Rockport, and Rockland, Maine, in the United States that takes place on the last weekend in September. Created in 2005 by Benjamin ...

. The film was produced by

Ovie Entertainment Ovie Entertainment is an American independent film motion picture production company based in New York City. Founded by Thoma Kikis, Christopher Kikis, Nicholas Levis, Cherise Wolas, and Alan Zelenetz in 2003 to produce independent and commerci ...

and

SeeThink Films SeeThink Films is a Brooklyn-based film production company focusing on documentary and narrative feature films. SeeThink Films founding members are filmmakers Tom Davis, Luke Meyer, Andrew Neel and Ethan Palmer. Films *''Goat'' dir. Andrew Neel ...

John Hodgman John Kellogg Hodgman (born June 3, 1971) is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as '' The Areas of My Expertise'', ''More Information Than You Require'', and '' That Is All'', he is known for ...

was hired to write a scripted film adaptation of the documentary. However plans fell through, but an excerpt of the unproduced screenplay was read on his

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

Judge John Hodgman ''Judge John Hodgman'' is a weekly, comedic court show podcast hosted by John Hodgman and Jesse Thorn. The show is distributed online by Maximum Fun. The program features host John Hodgman acting as a judge (with Jesse Thorn as bailiff) adjud ...

''.

Reception

''Darkon'' was well received by critics. The film has an 89% rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on the reviews of 19 critics.

References

External links

* *
''The Darkon Wargaming Club'' - official site of the role-playing club on which the film is based
2006 films American documentary films Live-action role-playing games 2006 documentary films Films shot in Baltimore SeeThink Films films Films directed by Andrew Neel 2000s English-language films 2000s American films {{arts-documentary-film-stub