Hobby
2008 · 48m · España
Directed by Ciro Altabás
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
A journey to Japan to live the launch of a new video-game console and get to know the history of Nintendo, where picturesque characters and impossible places steal the show amid nostalgia, culture clash and geekdom.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Nintendo pilgrimage masquerading as documentary—it's too earnest, too reverent toward its subject to really interrogate the mythology, which means it plays it safer than a Wii Sports resort.
Altabás situates this essay film within the lineage of personal documentary-as-travelogue, handling the structural tension between geek nostalgia and genuine cultural observation with formal restraint that rewards patient viewing.
The decision to let the peripheral characters—the obsessive collectors, the arcade operators, the forgotten designers—become the emotional core rather than the console itself is what transforms a fanboy road movie into something genuinely moving about fandom as communion.