Tube Poker Film Debuts
09th of September 2005
It is said gamblers will bet on anything. Commercial filmmaker Simon Levene proves this to be true in his short film Tube Poker, one of 21 such films from around the globe up for an award at the Venice Film Festival. The film’s subject is “Tube Poker,” a game played in the cars of the Japanese train system.
"Tube Poker is a harmless game played by children in Japan, and involves simply guessing the sex or age of the person who will sit in an empty seat in front of you,” said Levene. "But the Japanese Mafia have got involved because they run the trains there.”
The film uses fictional news reports, undercover police video and interviews mixed with fictional ones.
"I wanted to make a film that was on one hand completely believable and on the other hand completely absurd. The viewer is never sure what they are watching is real or not."
