Tempting Promises

Tucked quietly away in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, the tiny and bucolic village of Esino Lario (population 745) is the seemingly illogical host of the 2016 Wikimania conference - an annual meeting of international Wikipedia contributors and digital culture enthusiasts, which previously convened in such decidedly nonpastoral settings as Hong Kong, London, Washington, D.C., and Frankfurt. The villagers’ preparations for the event include gamely and cheerfully learning their impending visitors’ languages and customs, as well as attempts at being politely conversant in otherwise unfamiliar matters such as coding and tech jargon (in the Alps there are clouds, not The Cloud). Unlike in other cinematic culture clashes, in Esino Lario, modernity and tradition patiently comingle, and the film’s savvy sequencing offers impressionistic metaphors for the gentle redirection of technological colonization efforts. Earnest and open-armed like its resident subjects, Tempting Promises subtly, and often sweetly, raises and illustrates many of today’s pressing questions around identity and inclusion, ultimately suggesting we cannot have one without the other, whether the community is actual or virtual. (Full Frame Documentary Film Festival)