Austin Wolf-Sothern: Tetris: The Movie

Back in early 2002, I made something called Tetris: The Movie. I made it before movies based on video games were popular (my inspirations were mainly Super Mario Bros. and Mortal Kombat), and before Youtube existed. So now, if you search Youtube for "Tetris: The Movie" there are like 100 results. Honestly, the majority of them are probably better than mine, but as far as I know, I was the first, for whatever that's worth (nothing).

It's barely even a movie, it's mostly just games of Tetris. I made it by plugging the Nintendo into a VCR and then editing it with a second VCR. There's some experimental editing, some noise music, and a segment where I narrate over a game and use the words "Tetris Master" about 500 times. It was originally 70 minutes long because I wanted it to be a feature, but now it is only 43 minutes, which is still quite a bit longer than I expect anyone to actually sit watching it on the internet.

For years, it only existed on VHS, but I digitized it a couple months ago so it could be included in an awesome video game themed art show called Tetricide at Pehrspace in L.A., curated by the lovely Walt Gorecki. The show is still going through August 7, if you're in L.A. and want to check it out.

Here's how my movie was displayed. It's the one on the left. The image onscreen is from a trailer for a short I had made called Habitual Paraplegia, which I may or may not put online some day. It's not very good.

Here's me standing by it, on Opening Night.

Here I am playing Tetris at the show. I had no idea people were watching me. This is because, as I say in the movie, "It's about, like, Zen... and stuff." The girl looking at the camera is my sister.

This girl kept pressing buttons, trying to figure out how to play it. She finally turned to me and asked, "Do you know how to start this?" I told her it was a video, and she said "Oh," immediately removed the headphones, and walked away.