RoboCup99

A film about a particular human utopia: the man-made autonomous machine. It was shot during the 1999 robot football World Cup. The standard rhetoric is all there: the slow-mos, the replays, the penalty kick shoot-outs, the complaints about bad conditions, the agony, the ecstasy. RoboCup99 is Taanila’s first meta-narrative about cinema and the role of the camera. The programmers here explain that their profession is about image processing. The success of a robot depends on analysing information, the ability to see the ball and the field. What then is the difference between a director and a robot?