Operation Jane Walk appropriates the hallmarks of an action roleplaying game – Tom Clancy’s The Division (2016), set in a barren New York City after a smallpox pandemic – for an intricately rendered tour that digs into the city’s history through virtual visits to some notable landmarks. Bouncing from Stuyvesant Town to the United Nations Headquarters and down the sewers, a dry-witted tour guide makes plain how NYC was shaped by the Second World War, an evolving economy and the ideological jousting between urban theorists such as Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Between stops, the guide segues into musical interludes and poetic musings, but doesn’t let us forget the need to brandish a weapon for self-defence. The result is a highly imaginative film that interrogates the increasingly thin lines between real and digital worlds – but it’s also just a damn good time.
Skip the bus: this post-apocalyptic jaunt is the only New York tour you’ll ever need
21 December 2018

videoFilm and visual culture
Why do we crave the awful futures of apocalyptic fiction?
5 minutes

videoWork
Does capitalism make ‘non-playable characters’ of us all? An uncanny exploration
21 minutes

videoSubcultures
New York City, 1986 – the grit, the graffiti, the glory
18 minutes

videoWar and peace
What happens when pacifist soldiers search for peace in a war video game
21 minutes

videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes

videoArt
Is this what a city looks like in its dreams? A 360° dive into Tokyo
5 minutes


