ABOUT Darkon

"thoughtful documentary" -New York Times

"chronicle of true heroism" -New York Sun

Winner, South by Southwest Film Festival Audience Award

"Darkon" is a documentary feature that follows the real-life adventures of an unusual group of weekend "warrior knights," fantasy role-playing gamers whose live action "battleground" is modern-day Baltimore, Maryland, re-imagined as a make-believe medieval world named Darkon.

These live action gamers combine the physical drama of historical re-enactments with character-driven storylines inspired in part by such perennial favorite fantasy epics as the legends of King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, and the saga of Conan the Barbarian. As role players, these gamers create alter-egos with rich emotional, psychological, and social lives. They costume themselves and physically act out their characters' exploits both in intimate court intrigue and campouts and in panoramic battle scenarios involving competitive strategies, convincingly real props, and full contact "combat."

Directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer put three years into the project, first gaining the trust and access they needed from their subjects, then tackling their "in-character" fantasy world with the epic vocabulary we've come to expect from movies about Knights in Shining Armor: aerial and crane shots, history-making battle sequences, and a rousing original score.

In character, the people we meet are powerful leaders who participate in an emotionally rich social hierarchy; but we also see how easily "real life" gets in the way, and learn what drove them to become so involved in the fantasy world of Darkon in the first place. While maintaining an essential and clinical distance, DARKON at the same time enters the subjective imaginations of its participants and celebrates the inner-workings of a culture that lies just beneath the surface of everyday American life.

Everyone wants to be a hero.