Playfully, You The Better ingeniously cuts away at society's tender pain spots. The 'game' refers with a sharp, ironic wink of the eye to our society as a fickle lottery: You'd better make it, or else!
A handful of men in blue suits – sports socks pulled up high and heads bedecked with red-and-white caps – are purposefully sending yellow balls back and forth. These are the players of a game whose rules keep changing and who must adapt and change their strategy to win. The gambling stakes seem to get higher as time goes on. Thinking the House has changed the rules one last time, they mistakenly offer the balls to the one-armed Bandit, a true chance figure. This ‘chance’ element proves to be the only way to win against the House.
Our Blackbox programme selection includes many recent films, but we are happy to make an exception for Ericka Beckman’s You The Better, filmed in 16mm in 1983.
Ericka Beckman is not a new face: in recent decades, her work has been seen at numerous festivals and museums (Museum of American Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art and several international biennial exhibitions).
US / 1983 / 32'
