Poor Magic

The film portrays a post-human dystopia featuring faceless 3-D avatars continuously tortured in abstract digital space, a terrifying image of a future where all humanity is uploaded to a virtual purgatory and endlessly abused.

Experimental narrative animation using hobbyist 3D animation and inspired by niche genres of computer-generated erotica.

An essay film in the tradition of experimental documentarians like Chris Marker or Harun Farocki, Remember Carthage takes the viewer on an epic journey in search of an abandoned resort town deep in the Sahara desert. However, one travels not through archival or personal images but through footage sourced from PS3 video games and Second Life, depicting ancient civilizations that seem at once familiar and totally fantastical.

Kool-Aid Man travels through a variety of worlds from the video game Second Life.

In 2006, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen sets out to make television history. When a high stakes operation goes fatally wrong, his veneered dream of fame curdles into a nightmare of performative justice.

Jon Rafman's short features computer-generated renders of the Twin Towers and a narration from Charles Baudelaire's "Le Guignon."

‘Still Life (Betamale)’ draws images from a range of online fetish sites, engaging with the theme of obsessive desire. The narrated version of the album track is immersed in the simultaneously captivating and disturbing world of internet subcultures.

A series of character studies by Jon Rafman, loosely inspired by reddit copypasta.

A compelling mix of attraction and repulsion, Mainsqueeze is entirely composed of footage found online, surfing the deep web.

Two samurais fight on a beach.

Legendary Reality is a science-fiction essay film that portrays the recollections of a solitary narrator imprisoned in his own mind. Using a non-linear structure that weaves together dreams and memory, Jon Rafman creates a stream-of-consciousness meditation on art, identity and time that draw on the work of Leonard Cohen. The film intercuts digitally processed found photos and 3D landscapes sourced from video games to tell the enigmatic voyage of one man's soul.

SHADOWBANNED (2018) uses the aesthetics of internet conspiracy theories to tell the story of an anonymous narrator on an enigmatic, transdimensional journey. The film unfolds across multiple universes wherein dreams are recycled waste products and meaning has been all but lost. The narrator arms himself with artificial memories of artificial pasts in order to protect himself from the future. SHADOWBANNED is a meditation on the perception of history, esoteric culture and the implosion of meaning in our hyper-accelerated times.

A triptych video installation exploring collective consciousness, digital entities, and internet culture.

In ᖴᗩᑕIᗩᒪᔕ I, Jon Rafman alters a selection of these unwrapped head textures and animates the transformation in the style of VFX breakdown reels, typically used to showcase the special effects in movies and games.

An unseen narrator reunites with his old friend Joey Bernstein in the dingy back room of a comic and games store located in a dead mall. Bernstein asks if the narrator remembers their favorite childhood computer game, Punctured Sky, and informs him that all trace of the game has vanished from history. The narrator then embarks on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of Punctured Sky. Along the way, he must contend with a series of strange encounters on and offline and confront the precariousness of memory in the digital age.

Nine Eyes of Google Street View: Slideshow (2020) by Jon Rafman