Yesterday, the UPF Poblenou campus became a centre for experimentation and reflection on the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of filmmaking. +RAIN Film Fest, the first European festival of film created with AI was held. At the end of a full day of debate and experimentation dealing with the opportunities and ethical, aesthetic and political implications of AI in the world of film, the names of the three award-winning films were announced.

The Best Film Award went to Of Youth by Fran Gas (Spain), a film that reflects on how today’s society especially values youth and, conversely, marginalizes the elderly. Many of the images of the film, generated with AI, show beings with reptilian form and retro aesthetics, consistent with the disturbing nature of the story, which looks at how youth is stolen from many people, who grow old in a matter of seconds.

The Special Jury Prize went to Adam Cole (UK) for Kiss/Crash, based on a set of AI-created images that evoke the similarities between the collision of two vehicles and the collision of two people in amorous or sexual encounters.  

The festival’s Special Mention went to Algorithms of Beauty by Miléna Trivier (Belgium), which reflects on the parallels between real flowers, their material representation through handcrafts and the virtual flowers created with AI.

These are the films awarded at the first European AI film festival, a follow-up of the first international competition on the subject, the AI Film Festival, organized by Runway last February in New York. Due to its innovative nature, +RAIN aroused great expectation and reached its maximum capacity, with the participation of more than 300 people.

Laia de Nadal, UPF rector: “This festival shows the University’s desire to promote the transfer of knowledge in a field where it has been shown that research is not isolated from society, which has already adopted many of the artificial intelligence tools while advancing in research”

+RAIN Film Fest, organized by Pompeu Fabra University with the support of the Catalan Government and Barcelona City Council, is a partner of Runway and is part of the programme of Sónar+D. The event was presented by UPF rector, Laia de Nadal, who assured: “This festival shows the University’s desire to promote the transfer of knowledge, in a field where it has been shown that research is not isolated from society, which has already adopted many of the artificial intelligence tools while advancing in research, and it does so through cinema, due to its great innovative and artistic potential”.

Jordi Balló, Festival director: “We wanted to promote a space for reflection and academic and professional meeting on the avant-garde trends of today’s cinema, which can pave the way for new projects”.

During the presentation of the festival, the director of +RAIN Film Fest, Jordi Balló, added: “We wanted to promote a space for reflection and academic and professional meeting on the avant-garde trends of today’s cinema, which can pave the way for new projects”.

After the opening session, the festival consisted of the following three sections: RESEARCH (a morning of conferences and round tables), FEST (an afternoon of cinema) and LIVE (an evening of concerts).

FEST: Screenings of the 10 finalist films and talks with their directors on the implications of AI in the filmmaking process

The FEST section included the screening of the 10 finalist films of the festival by directors of eight different nationalities, lasting from between one and twenty minutes, which had been previously selected from the 48 entries. The films were judged by a jury consisting of Judith Colell, a filmmaker and president of the Catalan Film Academy; Bill Cusick, creative director of Stability; Cristóbal Valenzuela, co-founder of Runway;  Joanna Zylinska, a writer and a lecturer at King’s College London; and Lluís Nacenta, a writer, musician and researcher into music and technology, and curator of the exhibition on AI at the CCCB which will start in the autumn.

Many of the finalists not only use artificial intelligence in the creative process, whether in the generation of images, sounds or texts, but also incorporate AI and other emerging technologies in the plot. Talks with the directors of the films reflected on the films’ creative process. The winner of the Best Film Award, Fran Gas, said: “Artificial intelligence gives easy access to a lot of images, but that can also be stressful, because you have to find what you need. I generated more than 6,000 images before I chose the final ones”.

Photo album of FEST

RESEARCH: The narrative, aesthetic or ethical implications of AI, subjects for discussion

The screening of the finalist films was preceded by more than four hours of discussions on the potential and challenges of AI in the world of film and audiovisuals, from a critical perspective. The RESEARCH section enjoyed the participation of Joanna Zylinska, an expert on the impact of AI on the world of art and communication, who reflected on the creative potential of machines based on their ability to create images; and Andrea Guzman, an expert on the human-machine relationship, who addressed the challenges posed by the dissemination and communication of AI tools. Guzman noted: “To understand the present, we must take into account the past, with the aim of shaping the future. That’s what we’re doing today as we reflect on artificial intelligence, we’re shaping the future”.

Cristóbal Valenzuela, co-founder of Runway. “We are in a very disruptive moment, with new technological tools to make art and do incredible things that were unthinkable just two years ago. But we are at a very early stage”

Also participating was Cristóbal Valenzuela, co-founder of Runway, a generative video start-up, and promoter of the first international AI film festival held last February in New York. “We are in a very disruptive moment, with new technological tools to make art and do incredible things that were unthinkable just two years ago. But we are at a very early stage and there is still a lot to develop”, he explained.

At the festival, Víctor Pérez, a UPF alumni, co-founder of Krea, a generative image platform for creatives; Claudio Celis Bueno and Pei-Sze Chow, researchers on AI and cultural production, who represented the Automating Cinema project, reflected on the narrative capacity of the current tools. Another of the debates was dedicated to ethics and authorship in media and film creation in the age of AI, with interventions by Sara Suárez-Gonzalo, a researcher on the social and political implications of technologies based on big data; Albert Sabater, director of the Chair-Observatory of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence of Catalonia; and Claudia Gianneti, an expert in art and ICT.

Photo album of RESEARCH

Anna Xambó, experimental music creator and researcher: “Live-coding means giving directions to artificial intelligence tools in real time to generate music. There is, therefore, a risk component”

+RAIN closed with musical and audiovisual performances generated with the support of AI tools, during the LIVE section. Albert Barqué-Duran, an artist and a researcher in creative technologies and digital art, surprised those in attendance with his proposal Slowly fading into Data, a performance that straddles the boundaries between disciplines, languages, genres and identities. Anna Xambó, a producer of experimental electronic music and a researcher, also presented her live-coding proposal, a sound performance on the evolutionary construction of history, precisely inspired by the industrial past of the Poblenou campus. “Live-coding means giving directions to artificial intelligence tools in real time to generate music. There is, therefore, a risk component” - Xambó stated.

The audience also discovered the innovative proposals of the Irish composer Jennifer Walshe or by Nao Tokui, the founder of Qosmo, a creative AI studio based in Tokyo.

Photo album of LIVE

These sections (RESEARCH, FEST and LIVE) were rounded off with the FAIR, an exclusive working session for professionals of different profiles linked to the world of film and audiovisuals, jointly organized by UPF Ventures, Chair in Futures of Communication and The Catalan Audiovisual Cluster.

Photo album of FAIR

After the RAIN

After yesterday’s festival , talks on the implications of AI on the audiovisual world continue today at the After the rain event on the Poblenou campus. In addition, the winning or finalist films of +RAIN can be seen this June during the Sónar+D programme (15 and 16 June) or on the FILMIN platform (19-25 June). The CCCB also plans to screen the award-winning films at the exhibition that it will be dedicating to AI in the autumn. In addition, today and tomorrow, the AI & Web3 Creatives Summit is being held at Montjuïc exhibition centre during Sónar by Day, an event dealing with creativity and emerging technologies promoted jointly by Sónar+D and UPF Ventures.

Further information at:   

https://www.upf.edu/web/rainfilmfest/rain

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