Women’s Film Festival to Include Games

Bird’s Eye View Film Festival, a London-based event that celebrates women in film, is holding three game-related sessions as part of its 2008 schedule. The three sessions are “Screenwriting for Games,” “Games Tournament,” and “Women in Games Panel Discussion,” and are all slated under the festival’s “innovation” track. The panel discussion (5GBP) will take place Monday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. and will discuss how games now rival film for its demands on consumers’ time and money. The panelists, who include Katie Ellwood (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), Helen Kennedy (author of “Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?”), Emma Westecott (Starship Titanic producer), and others. Topics for discussion will cover gender stereotyping and the role played by women in the heavily male-dominated game development industry. In “Screenwriting for Games,” Katie Ellwood, a writer and producer for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, will discuss writing for video games in this practical course. The lectures is aimed at writers who have knowledge of writing for film and TV, but not games. Ellwood will also discuss how other media has affected narrative games and player awareness. “Screenwriting for Games” (10GBP) will be held Saturday, March 8, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. “Games Tournament” (8GBP) will be held Sunday March 9 from 8 to 10 p.m. All the game-related talks and tournament will be held at the ICA at The Mall in London.