Miguel Gomes, Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League, 2004
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VRAL is currently exhibiting Juan Obando’s Pro Revolution Soccer, a modded version of Konami's popular soccer game celebrating a counter-historical event: a match between Inter Milan and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation soccer team that never took place. Today, we are showcasing another example of Game Art made by hijacking, appropriating and recontextualizing Pro Evolution Soccer, Miguel Gomes’s Pre Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004). This article is the first of a series.
In a delightful diversion that lasts a mere minute entitled Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004), Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (b. 1972, Lisbon) playfully explores Konami’s popular soccer game Pro Evolution Soccer, infusing it with a captivating dance of joy that follows a triumphant goal. The viewer is invited to witness a symphony of robotic movements, as players Takemitsu, Berardo, Ringo Starr, Tomasson, Arnold, and Bonga grace the virtual field. Through skewed perspectives, uncanny choreographies, and a peculiar routine of replays, Gomes invites us into a world where algorithmic exultation reigns supreme, accompanied by the resounding clatter of a projector (!).
Unbeknownst to some, Miguel Gomes stands as one of the most accomplished Portuguese directors of our time, his cinematic prowess evident in his magnum opus, the epic Arabian Nights (2015). This monumental work — a visionary reinterpretation of the beloved tale One Thousand and One Nights — unfolds over an astonishing 382 minutes, masterfully set against the backdrop of contemporary Portugal. It comes as no surprise, then, that Gomes embraces a mantra that encapsulates his creative ethos: “Cinema is a game.” Trained at the esteemed Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Superior School of Theatre and Film Lisbon), Gomes initially carved his path (1996-2000) as a film critic and prolific author of insightful theoretical treatises on the art of cinema.
Originally commissioned by the revered Rotterdam Film Festival and showcased at prestigious cinema-based events worldwide, including the Austrian retrospective Viennale and the Sao Paulo Film Festival, Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League is almost twenty years old. This production coincided with the release of Gomes’s debut film, A Cara Que Mereces, in Portugal — a film that heralded his arrival on the directorial stage. Notably, Pre Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance… was five years prior to the pioneering work of Spanish artist Marta Azparren, who harnessed the same game fondly known among enthusiasts as PES, to craft the esteemed machinima The Goalkeeper and the Void (2009) which was shown, among others, in the context of the 2016 exhibition Game Video Art. A Survey at IULM University.
Matteo Bittanti
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