Game

Five players tell their stories and the importance of soccer in their lives throughout the largest amateur soccer tournament in America.

Two friends have disparate reactions when one of them is diagnosed with cancer. Their argument comes to a head when the life expectancy of the illness is revealed.

First we drive past harrowing scenes of missile and bullet damage, into an area that’s still intact. At a crossroads not far from the frontline, three boys in fatigues, with wooden guns, act out a grown-up duty: to uncover Russian spies. The drivers, both soldiers and civilians, are cheered by the children’s playful solidarity. Cars are flagged down, IDs requested, trunks inspected. A password is demanded: “Palyanitsya”, the name of a traditional Ukrainian bread, and a word that Russians can’t pronounce right. As it happens, bread also is the universal symbol of life.

Children getting into a frightful mess that only parents could sort out: this familiar scenario plays out subversively, for the rescuing ‘Mother’ is just a child. A circle turns into a knot as the kids entangle themselves, still clutching, ever more twistedly, the same hands.* Once paralyzed, the group cries chorally for ‘Mother’ and she appears. With remarkable engineering flair, ‘Mother’ figures out how to unknot the knot without breaking the links of hands, shoving arms over heads and directing legs under and over. Suddenly, like a disentangled string of Christmas lights, the chain becomes circular again.

Many of us played this as kids, spinning on the spot until collapsing. In a group there’s a competitive element, each tries to be the last one still upright; but it’s only, always, about inner sensation. A crazy, soaring dizziness, a drugless altered state, glimpsed in the unseeing inwardness of some eyes that remain half-open. Arms outstretch like wings, amplifying and balancing the whirl of abandon. To the soft beat of unconsciously synchronised steps, the camera moves down to capture long shadows, like images of the disembodiment being felt: ghostly rotations among the sand stones bare feet don’t feel.

Each couple tries to save an orange from gravity. When it falls, the pair is eliminated. This exercise in collaboration involves intimacy: faces are only an orange apart. It involves embraces, though not loving so much as keeping the partner in tension. Pacifying their natural energy with an eerie, giggly humming, the children shuffle like old marrieds at a tea dance, united and separated by a scandalous orange globe. Eyes sockets and cheekbones prove useless against roundness; even the winning couple’s triumph is short-lived.

Neither indoors nor out, but on the doorstep, where you might play a quick game while waiting for someone. Girl and boy pile up candy wrappers, face down; elsewhere, for the game is widespread, it could be cards, tokens, any flimsy object with a front and a back. A lightning round of scissors-paper-rock decides who slaps first. The aim is to make the colourful, ‘right’ sides appear, and these wrappers can be claimed, yet are soon back in play. The siblings have identical profiles, and sometimes positions, like one person playing in a mirror. When the door opens and the someone appears, they rush off into their day.

Why do all the bottle tops start the same way up, grouped together, if there are two teams? When is the ball launched with a plank and when by hand? Why sometimes way overhead and sometimes to the body? When can you turn the tops over? Is it like the runs in cricket or baseball, hurriedly performed while the ball is elsewhere? But how can each team’s turning score be counted? Is the ball as hard and painful as it sounds? How do you get “burned”? Does that give the other team the ball, or are there a set number of throws? Does deflecting the ball a long way with your plank count for anything? How did the winning team win? Why is the game called Stars?

In a dimly lit room, two boys engage in an intense chess match. As tension rises and strategies unfold, the game becomes a battleground of wits and wills, leading to an unexpected climax that goes beyond the boundaries of the board.

Follow Triple H's rise to the top of the sports-entertainment business.

An intriguing slice of East London life circa 1990, Playing the Game explores the thorny issue of sexual identity within working class football culture.

Cory Grant must handle a great deal of responsibility and pressure for a boy his age. After his morning paper route, he cooks breakfast for his father, John, who is blind and ill. They talk of Cory's chances as quarterback for the Chase College football team.

Surya hates women. He decides to teach Amrutha a lesson after overhearing her talking against men. When Amrutha learns of his trick, she decides to play along.

Feature Film

Roy Brush has aspirations to be a great footballer and this seems likely when he scores for England in the European Cup Final. To add to this he becomes a national hero, having seemingly saved a young lad from drowning. But Roy has a secret - he is gay - and the editor of the scurrilous 'Scum' tabloid is making it his business to out him. However, with the help of his manager, Roy can triumph at an inspirational climactic football match, where his tears touch the heart of the nation - and pundit Jimmy Twizzle gets very high on mushroom tea.

1973 documentary on boxing from filmmaker Philip Donnellan, inspired by an original Radio Ballad of the same name by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

While spending the day together, a teen and his grandfather decided to play a board game.

Police search for drugs in a house where they arrest a group of boys who return from a basketball game and are accused of having a loud party and sniffing glue.

Two friends grow up in the inner city with basketball as their bond, but they discover they have completely different ambitions: Andre is focused on a future in the NBA, and Tyrone turns to crime and drugs.