Description:
Current AI discourse often falls into polarized camps: critics who reject AI wholesale versus industry advocates emphasizing advancements. In the context of film and media culture, anxieties about AI’s impact on labor, authorship, ownership, and aesthetics stand in sharp contrast to promises of democratic access to cultural production and a new golden age for filmmaking. This gathering seeks to bridge these divides by bringing together expert voices from academia, the film industry, creative technologists, media advocacy, and curatorship, to collectively address a moment of profound transformation.
The sessions are organized as conversations around three interrelated themes: Visions of AI Film Culture, which examines how AI reshapes our imagination of cinema and its possibilities; AI’s Impact on Film Culture, which takes stock of current challenges and concerns, from labor conditions to creative practices; and Strategies for a Sustainable AI Future, which explores alternative models, collective strategies, and ethical frameworks for moving forward. They investigate our relationship with technology, both past and present, and its implications for our political, ethical and creative lives.
Two evening screenings at the Billy Wilder Theater join works presented by Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland’s preeminent cinematic event, with works by LA-based filmmakers and archives, fostering a transatlantic exchange in this global debate.
This event is a continuation of the Future of Reality Conference that took place at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, in which AI emerged as a major theme. It is organized by Lucas Hagin, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, Evelyn Kreutzer, Kevin B. Lee, Maya Montañez Smukler, Nicole Uciedo and Emma Broggini, and in partnership between Locarno Film Festival,
Swissnex in San Francisco, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI).
Expected speakers:
- Paul Trillo (leading AI artist/filmmaker)
- Doris Berger (Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and curator of the “Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema” exhibit, Academy Museum)
- Fred Grinstein (leading industry figure/innovator)
- Shane Denson (Professor, Stanford University, digital media theorist and curator)
- Rebecca Baron (Faculty, Cal Arts, filmmaker and artist)
- Doug Goodwin (Faculty, Cal Arts, filmmaker and artist)
- Abby Sun (Program Director, International Documentary Association)
- Holly Willis (Professor of Cinematic Arts, Chair of the Media Arts + Practice Division, USC)
- Ranu Mukherjee (Visual artists and Dean of the School of Film/Video, Cal Arts, which is involved in the foundation of the new Chanel Center for Artists and Technology)
- Lauren Lee McCarthy (digital media artist)
OCTOBER 24th
4:00-5:30, Darren Star Theater, UCLA
Session 1: Visions of AI Film Culture
- Paul Trillo (leading AI artist/filmmaker, confirmed for the event, not for specific session)
- Doris Berger (Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and curator of the “Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema” exhibit, Academy Museum) (confirmed)
- Fred Grinstein (leading industry figure/innovator, confirmed)
- moderator/respondent: TBD
This session might include a stimulation exercise for participants, e.g. add the most pressing question/concern/something like that to guide the conversation and to come back to on day 2.
7:30pm Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum
Screening Program
Visions of the Future, Then and Now
This screening program presents a selection of archival and contemporary short films and video essays that explore the intersection of technology, AI and film history. Through documentary, experimental and artistic means, the selected works investigate our relationship with technology, its historical legacies and its implications for the political, ethical and stylistic fabric of our time.—guest programmers Evelyn Kreutzer and Kevin B. Lee
Series programmed by Evelyn Kreutzer, Kevin B. Lee, Maya Montañez Smukler, Mark Quigley and Nicole Ucedo.
Generous support provided by the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Locarno Film Festival and Swissnex in San Francisco.
Latencies of the Statistical Image
Catalunya, 2024
The essay explores the genealogies that link today’s computer vision and artificial intelligence imaging systems to 19th-century scientific research’s use of photography. Using the work of Étienne-Jules Marey and Francis Galton as case studies, the essay encourages an analysis of the latencies or cultural mutations manifest in the operative images of both periods.—Roc Albalat
DCP, color, 9 min. Director: Roc Albalat.
The Twilight Zone: “From Agnes — With Love”
U.S., 2/14/1964
A simple task for a computer engineer becomes an all-encompassing problem when emotions get involved in this tale of man vs. technology.—Programming Coordinator Nicole Ucedo
DCP, b&w, 25 min. CBS/Cayuga. Producers: William Froug, Rod Serling. Director: Richard Donner. Writer: Bernard C. Schoenfeld. With: Wally Cox, Ralph Taeger, Sue Randall.
Fembot in a Red Dress
U.S., 2015
Fembot in a Red Dress analyzes the cultural trope of the “lady in red” as it evolved from the genre of film noir to science fiction and from the human to the artificial female in a variety of film and television texts. Through juxtaposed sequences of fembots, “ladies in red,” and a combination of the two, the work attempts to mine the potential of the “critical supercut” not only for laying bare gendered patterns of representation, but also for uncovering subtle variations in meaning across cinematic texts and contexts.—Allison de Fren
DCP, color, 13 min. Director: Allison de Fren.
Not Exactly a Still Life
Switzerland, 2024
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a film about the drive to repeat and reproduce lost things, and the failure to do so. What would it mean to repeat the images of this repetitious film with the help of AI — but as disturbing (failed) dreams rather than an exact replica? We begin to imagine a new film within the one we know. AI gives us back the history of cinema — as an uncanny double.—Johannes Binotto
DCP, color, 4 min. Director: Johannes Binotto.
Toute la data du monde
Switzerland, 2025
An experimental short essay film that reimagines Alain Resnais’ iconic 1956 essay film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) for the AI age. Resnais’ film, on the surface a documentary portrait of the National Library of France, has commonly been understood as a meditation on the crisis of memory, knowledge and ethics after the horrors of World War II. Toute la data du monde takes some of Resnais’ images and questions as inspiration and applies them to this new current crisis of memory, knowledge and archivization in the age of AI. Through surreal, meditative and entirely AI-generated images, it suggests what the libraries of artificial intelligence and data might look like.—Evelyn Kreutzer
DCP, b&w, in French with English subtitles, 4 min. Director: Evelyn Kreutzer
Afterlives (excerpt)
Germany/Belgium/France, 2025
Afterlives is a desktop documentary that critically engages with the historical and digital traces of extremist propaganda, questioning how images of violence circulate, mutate and persist. This excerpt explores how online platforms, including generative AI models, facilitate the disappearance and reappearance of extremist media.—Kevin B. Lee
DCP, color, 7 min. Director: Kevin B. Lee.
October 25th
2:00-3:30, Darren Star Theater, UCLA
Session 2: AI’s Impact on Film Culture
- Shane Denson (confirmed)
- Rebecca Baron + Doug Goodwin (confirmed for the event, not the specific slot)
- Abby Sun (confirmed, International Documentary Association, very invested in sustainable practices in documentary, advocacy for filmmakers in the age of streaming and datafication)
- moderator: TBD
4:00-5:30, Darren Star Theater, UCLA
Session 3: Strategies for a Sustainable AI Future
- Holly Willis (confirmed)
- Ranu Mukherjee (confirmed, can speak to the new Center for AI and the Arts and CalArts, and how they’re navigating students’ needs and worries in the creative sector, is also an accomplished artist and filmmaker herself)
- Lauren Lee McCarthy (confirmed)
- moderator/respondent: TBD
7:30 pm, Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum
Screening Program
Real
Italy, 2024
Adele Tulli’s Real is a hypnotic and rhythmic journey via close encounters with AI, the internet and avatars. The observational documentary examines how and what people are using the internet for, as well as newer technologies that are emerging daily. As more communities form online, less human to human interaction is witnessed. This haunting portrait of human engagement with technologies focuses on influencers, children and everyone in between who is learning and adapting to AI and new tech at a rapid rate, from Korea to Italy and the U.S.—Programming Coordinator Nicole Ucedo
DCP, color, in Korean, English, Italian and German with English subtitles, 83 min. Director/Screenwriter: Adele Tulli.
