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OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
MaxMotives (S1 E1) follows the lives of seven alter-egos and an unwanted “non-resident alien” newborn. Filmed and produced entirely within The Sims 2 video game—with minimal post-production manipulation—the piece adopts the visual and narrative aesthetics of reality television to investigate the uncanny underpinnings of the everyday.
Drawing from mainstream storytelling tropes, MaxMotives uses humor and hyperbole to stage a surreal domestic drama where even the most mundane actions become uncanny spectacles. Season One centers on fears surrounding the “other,” alongside conservative and stereotypical ideals of what it means to be a “good mother.”
The narrative unfolds as the characters question the legitimacy and origin of the non-resident alien newborn—a term lifted from U.S. immigration policy referring to non-citizen visa holders. Taken literally, “alien” invokes both pop-cultural imaginings of extraterrestrials and the real-world anxieties of xenophobia. By merging these interpretations, MaxMotives exposes how fear of the unknown—whether fantastical or bureaucratic—manifests in social, familial, and political structures.
- Year2019
- Runtime6 minutes
- LanguagePersian
- CountryUnited States, Iran
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorBahareh Khoshooee
OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
MaxMotives (S1 E1) follows the lives of seven alter-egos and an unwanted “non-resident alien” newborn. Filmed and produced entirely within The Sims 2 video game—with minimal post-production manipulation—the piece adopts the visual and narrative aesthetics of reality television to investigate the uncanny underpinnings of the everyday.
Drawing from mainstream storytelling tropes, MaxMotives uses humor and hyperbole to stage a surreal domestic drama where even the most mundane actions become uncanny spectacles. Season One centers on fears surrounding the “other,” alongside conservative and stereotypical ideals of what it means to be a “good mother.”
The narrative unfolds as the characters question the legitimacy and origin of the non-resident alien newborn—a term lifted from U.S. immigration policy referring to non-citizen visa holders. Taken literally, “alien” invokes both pop-cultural imaginings of extraterrestrials and the real-world anxieties of xenophobia. By merging these interpretations, MaxMotives exposes how fear of the unknown—whether fantastical or bureaucratic—manifests in social, familial, and political structures.
- Year2019
- Runtime6 minutes
- LanguagePersian
- CountryUnited States, Iran
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorBahareh Khoshooee