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A documentary about compettative Street Fighting.

There’s an actual good Street Fighter movie coming out this week! (and no its not The Legend of Chun Li)

A roommate of mine from college is having his world premier of his first documentary, “I Got Next” this Friday, June 26th, online at 8pm. A film by Ian Cofino, that chronicles the ups and downs, the stories of players around the United States as they play and compete in Street Fighter tournaments. I was able to see a rough cut a while back and damn, it was awesome. I was able to get a brief interview with Ian Cofino in between his busy time of filming and editing.

A quick expert from the interview:

GSFB:So what exactly Is happening on Friday?

IC:This Friday, the short cut of the film will be premiering (live streamed) on ufragtv.com at 8pm EST. Before the film I’ll give a short introduction and after the film there will be a Q&A session with myself, (and players such as:) Joe “iloveu” Ciaramelli, Mike Ross, and Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, all of whom are major characters in the film and top players in the SF world.

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GwenStacyFanboy: How did this come about?

Ian Cofino: I Got Next started pretty simply, as my Senior Project for Purchase College School of Art+Design. Then it gradually snowballed to become a larger project as I traveled more, [and] met more people within the community and gathered more footage.

GSFB: What is it about Street Fighter that causes such fan devotion?

IC:I think there are a few factors. One, of course is the game itself, it fosters competition and because of the nature of the game, no two matches are ever alike. So the game can remain fresh play after play, but because the game fosters competition, it also creates a scene. And the community is a big thing that keeps people coming back. The players in the Street Fighter community are not really your average gamer for the most part. They skew older because of when the original [Street Fighter] came out and [because of] the nature of the game,
which creates a more tightly knit community.

GSFB: Whats the most interesting thing learned from making this documentary?

IC: There were a lot of great things I picked up and this documentary was definitely a learning experience for me, especially as someone fairly new to film making and to the fighting game scene. I’d say that [it would be] learning the in’s and outs, the history of the community, because it’s so rich. [That] was really exciting. No one really has it in one place. You can’t go to Wikipedia to look up the community, you have to talk with the people and not just one person. But a lot of people from all over to really get a full perspective on what happened. [It was interesting] To find out in the early 90s, when Hyper Fighting was out, the stories of Tomo Ohira. Or in the late 90s when Valle and Choi were playing Alpha and people started to recognize Japan. Or in early 2000 when the east coast would travel west to dominate in Marvel and then connect all that information to now.

GSFB:So what exactly Is happening on Friday?

IC:This Friday, the short cut of the film will be premiering (live streamed) on ufragtv.com at 8pm EST. Bfore the film I’ll give a short introduction and after the film there will be a Q&A session with myself, (and players such as:) Joe “iloveu” Ciaramelli, Mike Ross, and Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, all of whom are major characters in the film and top players in the SF world.

GSFB:And whats next after this Friday premier?

IC: Right now things are being worked out for the film to be put up on other streaming websites, so anyone can stream it for free after the Friday premiere. After that, I’ll be distributing an HD copy of the film via a torrent that anyone is free to download.

Again it will be airing at 8pm EST on UFRAGTV.COM this Friday, June 26th!

Tags: cofino, documentary, i got next, street fighter

This entry was posted on June 25, 2009 at 8:27 pm and is filed under games, movies & tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.