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Is artificial intelligence destroying cinema as we know it? Are we entering the age of the computer-generated DIY film? AI brings tumultuous changes to the established film industry, at the same time as it is creating new opportunities for independent filmmakers, and perhaps even birthing new genres of moving image art.��

This exhibition of short narrative films, curated by the XDN team at the ���ϳԹ���Դ's Center for Digital Narrative, provides an early glimpse into some innovative experiments with AI technologies that may redefine how movies are made in the future.

The exhibition is open throughout the festival period.

Exhibition:

An Eye for AI Cinema

October 15th-23rd

Opening hours 14-20��

Friday 17th October

16:00 - 17:30 About a Hero, film��screening in Cinemateket, USF

17:30 - 19:00 Opening event and panel about AI Cinema in Visningsrommet, USF

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List of works and artists bio

AFFAIR IN MARSEILLE (2025)

MEDIA: Digital Video — Google Flow/Veo, Suno, ElevenLabs

DURATION:��21m22s

ARTIST: Laurent Basset

DESCRIPTION:��A murder, mystery, espionage, film noir set in 1939 Marseille just before WWII. A protagonist with a checkered past, Max Denholm, finds himself embroiled in political affairs he can neither control nor escape. The film transports viewers to a bygone era, a period piece in the classic style of noir. Created and written by Sebastien Basset, AI cinematography and editing by Laurent Basset.

BIO:��Laurent Basset has been a Director of Photography for over three decades with a strong background in short- and long-form documentaries as well as reality television. His directing and editing experience bring both a keen sense of shot composition and a sensibility toward content and storyline. The advent of generative AI in the visual arts and more specifically in the video field has reinvigorated his passion for narrative work. Being able to bring a script to the screen without a Hollywood budget inspired him to make Affair in Marseille, originally written by his son Sebastien Basset as a 1940s-style classic radio play.

WEBSITE:��

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HANAA (2025)

MEDIA: Documentary (Live Action / AI Film), MidJourney, Runway Gen-4

DURATION:��3m55s

ARTIST: Seif Abdalla

DESCRIPTION:��HANAA is a poetic cinematic portrait of an Egyptian woman and mother who journeys from her youth in Alexandria through motherhood, immigration, and reinvention in New York—an intimate meditation on memory, displacement, and the quiet dignity of starting over.

PRODUCTION NOTES:��Produced and funded by Runway Studio (New York). Live-action segments shot on set; AI components generated in MidJourney, animated using Runway Gen-4. Voiceover recorded by the subject, edited in Premiere Pro, finalized in After Effects.

BIO:��Seif Abdalla is a director, cinematographer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work spans documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema. He began his career in graphic design before pursuing filmmaking at the Los Angeles Film School. After graduating, he worked globally on documentaries for National Geographic and Vice, as well as branded content for GQ, Lancôme, Adidas, and Vogue. His debut feature documentary screened internationally in Cairo, Málaga, Amman, and Austria.

WEBSITE:�� |��

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Study of animals in motion in the style of Eadweard Muybridge (2025)

MEDIA: Midjourney Version 5.1 prints.

ARTIST: Micol Hebron

DESCRIPTION:��Considering the origins and construction of moving images, Hebron prompted Midjourney to return to Muybridge's canonical grids of animals in motion. She was interested to see if the AI model could discern - and predict - novel movement sequences and present them in a grid in return. Taking just one of the resulting images from the prompt 'Study of animals in motion in the style of Eadweard Muybridge', Hebron then asked Midjourney to repeatedly generate nearly 1000 variations of that same image, without any changes to the original prompt. The result was a devolution of forms from a grid to a single animal, and from a horse, to a chimerical rooster. The images here are just a few key examples from the beginning, middle, and end of the numerous iterations.

BIO:��Micol Hebron is a feminist artist, professor and organizer based in Los Angeles. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Chapman University in Southern California, and the director of Feminist Summer Camp, a consciousness-raising retreat in Utah. Hebron sits on the Board of Directors of the Center Pompadour Residency in Northern France. She is perhaps best known for two decade-long feminist projects: The Male Nipple Pasty, a digital intervention used to push back against sexist double standard in social media policy that prohibits showing female nipples (but not males’); and Gallery Tally, a collaborative data visualization project that examined the ratios of male and female artists in contemporary galleries (galleries show 35% female artists, worldwide). Hebron employs strategies of consciousness-raising, collaboration, generosity, play, and participation to support and further feminist dialogues in art and life.

WEBSITE:��, and @unicornkiller1 (Instagram)

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ONE LAST WISH (2024)

MEDIA: Animated Short (AI) — ChatGPT, MidJourney, Magnifique, Photoshop, After Effects, Act One (Runway), Kling, ElevenLabs, Premiere, Topaz

DURATION:��3m52s

ARTIST: Simon M. Valentine

DESCRIPTION:��One Last Wish was created in 48 hours by Edmond Yang, Simon M. Valentine, and Alex Holm as part of the Cinema Synthetica Norway workshop, which challenged filmmakers to produce a short film entirely with AI. Based on a script by Erlend Loe, the story follows an elderly woman awaiting her death sentence in a stark Scandinavian prison. Granted one final request, she asks her guard for one last experience. Both tender and unsettling, the film portrays an absurd Kafkaesque world. Premiering at the Norwegian AI Conference (2024), One Last Wish merges human performances with AI-generated visuals.

BIO:��Simon M. Valentine is a Norwegian filmmaker (MFA, Norwegian Film School, 2024). His work explores how technology and social systems shape human relationships, blending sci-fi, horror, and magical realism. Incorporating dance and experimental visual approaches, Valentine creates heightened realities that unsettle and engage. He recently began integrating AI into his practice and won the Project Odysse Award for best narrative short for One Last Wish. He has also directed music videos and installations for artists including Karpe, Cezinando, Röyksopp, and The Norwegian Opera & Ballet.

WEBSITE:��

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OPTIMALS (2025)

MEDIA: AI Film — Midjourney, Adobe Photoshop, Kling, Runway, LumaAI, Hailou.ai, Hedra, ElevenLabs, Suno, Udio, Meta AudioGen, Adobe Premiere

DURATION:��20m00s

ARTIST: Sebastian Macchia

DESCRIPTION:��OPTIMALS imagines a future where a super-intelligent AI rewrites human genetics at the embryonic stage, giving birth to Ennio—the first child with the superpowers of artificial intelligence. As the world struggles to define him, the film explores identity, power, and love—the one mystery AI cannot solve.

BIO:��Sebastian Macchia is an electronics engineer with a background in film studies, working at the intersection of technology and creativity. He is an early voice in Generative Cinema and creator of Nobody & The Computer, a YouTube channel where every image, sound, and voice is generated with AI. His films, screened and awarded internationally, challenge narrative norms while exploring what remains essentially human in a machine-driven age.

WEBSITE:��

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ECHOES UNSEEN (2024)

MEDIA: Moon Valley Generative AI video trilogy

DURATION:��2m15s, 5m01s, 5m04s

ARTIST: visual: Sachiko Hayashi + AI, sound: Nina Sobell + Sachiko Hayashi

DESCRIPTION:��The GenAI Video Trilogy “Echoes Unseen” is a journey through time, memory, and imagination, told with the lens of artificial intelligence. Each piece in the trilogy—Collage Me, Woman with a Camera, and In My Mind’s Eye—serves as a chapter in an evolving narrative that converges the past with the present and ventures into the limitless realms of the human psyche.

Collage Me is a meditation on memory and identity. Using AI to stitch together fragments of history, it reconstructs the past from a contemporary standpoint.��

Woman With A Camera continues this exploration by focusing on the role of the observer. Through the eyes of a female protagonist, this piece examines the act of seeing and being seen.��

In My Mind’s Eye transcends the boundaries of conventional filmmaking to delve into the expressionistic capabilities of AI.

Together, these three pieces form a cohesive narrative that interrogates the relationship between past, present, and future, while also pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling. The GenAI Video Trilogy “Echoes Unseen” is not just a series of films, but a reflection on the evolving role of technology in art and the endless possibilities it offers for reimagining our world.

BIO:��Sachiko Hayashi is a Japanese-born visual artist, born in 1962, who is now based in Sweden. She’s known for her interdisciplinary approach to art, working primarily with digital and interactive media. Her artistic practice is quite conceptual and explores themes of identity and otherness. She examines gender, identity, and the nature of knowledge by combining conceptual frameworks with experimental use of digital media. Her work crystallizes perspectives, reflecting the Otherness she encounters, such as gender, race, and aesthetics, and merges innovative media to communicate these unique experiences.

WEBSITE:��

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WHEREVER I GO, YOU’RE ALWAYS WITH ME (2025)

MEDIA: AI Animation — Wan2.1-VACE-14B, FLUX.1-Depth-dev, dpt-large, openpose, Runpod, ComfyUI

ARTISTS: Lina Ruth Harder & Colin Robinson

DURATION: ?????m????s

DESCRIPTION:��A woman and her dog repeat the same motion as the world transforms around them. Boats become spaceships, film becomes digital, 8-bit graphics turn hyperreal, medieval tapestries evolve into modern art. Through every shift, the dog remains a faithful companion—reflecting the timeless bond between humans and their best friend.

BIO:��Lina Ruth Harder is a researcher and cultural practitioner exploring AI, history, and storytelling. A PhD Fellow at the Center for Digital Narrative (University of Bergen), she examines AI simulations of historical figures and their influence on memory and learning.

Colin Robinson is an engineer, researcher, and game developer at ���ϳԹ���Դ, working across digital literature, AI art, and interactive media.

WEBSITE:��

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RIVERRUN (FASCISTCHICFASCISTQUICK) (2025)

MEDIA: AI Video — Runway (Gen-4, Gen-4 Turbo, Act Two), ChatGPT 5, ElevenLabs

ARTIST: Scott Rettberg

DURATION:����6m14s

DESCRIPTION:��Riverrun (fascistchicfascistquick)��from Donneagain’s Wake is an experiment in literary satire through generative cinema. The script was developed by prompting ChatGPT to rewrite the opening of Finnegans Wake as a critique of American politics, sports and media in the context of the Republicans in Love project. The generated text was edited as a long poem, narrated with an ElevenLabs clone of James Joyce’s voice, and visualized through text-to-video prompts in Runway.

BIO:��Scott Rettberg is Director of the Center for Digital Narrative (���ϳԹ���Դ), Professor of Digital Culture, and leader of the Extending Digital Narrative Project. He is the author/coauthor of numerous works of electronic literature, combinatory poetry, and film, including The Unknown, Implementation, Frequency, �մdz澱•C���ٲ�, and Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project.

WEBSITE:����

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BRAIN-KNOT ALTAR (2025)

MEDIA: Multi-Screen AI Video Installation — Veo3, Runway, Fal.ai, Flux.dev Kontext, GPT-5, Gemini, Suno, ElevenLabs, DeepGram, Topaz, Seedance v1, Seedream v4, + Italian Brain Rot cards (supplied courtesy of Gabrielle de Seta)

ARTIST: David Jhave Johnston

DURATION:��Approximately 30m total of looping variable length videos.

DESCRIPTION:��Brain-Knot Altar is a pyramid grid of 6 looping screens + 2 tablets, showing 12 short AI-generated videos. Each fragment reflects a search for the core of micro-narratives: what constitutes interest in an era of abundance? As certainty erodes, attention fragments, collective storytelling corrodes, and catharsis totters toward torpor. A veneration of trivia mingling with the profound, Brain Knot Altar visualizes the tension between algorithmic overload and emergent meaning.

BIO:��David Jhave Johnston is a digital poet working in emergent domains. Author of ReRites (Anteism, 2019) and Aesthetic Animism (MIT Press, 2016). He is currenty an AI-narrative researcher at the ���ϳԹ���Դ Centre for Digital Narrative (2023–26) with the Extending Digital Narrative project.

WEBSITE:��

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POSTER-PHOTO BOOTH (2025)

MEDIA: Interactive AI Image-Generation Booth, -��Participatory!

ARTISTS: Colin Robinson, PM: Ola Roth Johnsen, Contributors: Jhave Johnston, Scott Rettberg, Andreas Hadsel Opsvik

DESCRIPTION:��Interactive, safe, and reliable image-generation booth aligned with exhibition themes. See yourself inserted into parodies of canonical movie posters.

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POSTER WALL (2025)

MEDIA: Print — GPT-5, Seedream 4, Nano-Banana, etc.

ARTISTS: CDN Collective “Defrag Playground”

DESCRIPTION:��A collective poster wall featuring speculative and humorous AI-generated designs:

• Andreas: LANs within LANs within LANs
• Andreas: Legacy (The Most Generic Movie Poster Ever)
• Scott: Billionaires in Space
• Ola: James Bond in Grid Eclipse
• Colin: High Functioning
• Jhave: Almost Useless
• Hanna: Glitz and Algorithms
• Jack: The Big Reset
• Lina: 404 Realness Not Found (EDIT)
• Mahaut: Ashes of Code

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