Computer Chess

Director: Andrew Bujalski, Andrew Bujalski

2013 / 92min / 35mm

Bujalski’s piquant comedy of manners built around vintage “state-of-the-art” technology, re-released for its 10th anniversary, sets its scene at a bland California hotel hosting two conventions: one, bringing together socially maladroit techies competing to see who has built the best computer chess program, the other, a human potential movement group calling themselves “the seekers.” Shot with a nonprofessional cast on period-appropriate analog video cameras, Computer Chess is a mordantly funny, stylistically film that explores the unexpected parallels that emerge in the intersection of the cults of self-improvement and scientific innovation.

35mm print courtesy of the Chicago Film Society.