Artificial intelligence, including generative artificial intelligence, is one of the basic themes of the 77th Locarno Film Festival.
Thursday’s session of the Locarno Professional industry program focused on the topic, which will be discussed by several films from the Locarno 77 lineup, whose international competition will be led by Austrian director Jessica Hausner The focus of the main jury.
New film from Portuguese filmmaker Edgar Pera telepathic letters (telepathy card) are even created with artificial intelligence images. Screening in Locarno’s out-of-competition line-up, it explores the “invisible connection” between writers HP Lovecraft and Fernando Pessoa in a way that is sure to stand out both visually and sonically. Check out the trailer below.
In an email interview ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Swiss arts festival Pêra THRdiscusses his fascination with technology and the themes that preoccupied Lovecraft and Pessoa.
How did you come up with the idea for this film?
I [have been] I’ve been obsessed with the work of Pessoa and Lovecraft since I was a teenager, and I quickly realized there was a connection between their reflections on human nature – like they were both spectators of the universe. Since I finished film school I’ve done film adaptations of Lovecraft and Pessoa, but I’ve only briefly used their texts in one film, magnetic path. But in the process of preparation nothingness clubRegarding Pessoa’s synonyms, I found that there are many invisible connections between them. Now I have many of their books, [where I have] In the margins are written “Link to Lovecraft” or “Link to Pessoa.”
Since we were already preparing spiral of feara Lovecraft feature, I thought making a film about them might be a good way for Pessoa and Lovecraft readers to meet.
You’re constantly working with cutting-edge technology. Is this your first film using artificial intelligence? Why did you decide to use it here?
um, I [have] Always using cutting edge technology, but always in low budget mode. Whenever something new comes out, I’m interested because I see film technology as a set of toys. I think of the camera as a toy in my hands, and a friend of mine once said of my films that I think with my hands.
Aldous Huxley wrote that books are the toys of consciousness, whereas I see movies as a playground where I can invent my own rules. As Pessoa said, artists do not copy the universe, but invent new ones.
telepathic letters Originally a documentary with scenes of some actors nothingness clubbut I didn’t feel challenged – it was just a continuation of the same process, but with a much smaller budget.
But after September 2, 2022, I started writing prompts for creating images, and within a year my life changed: I was sucked into a vortex of hundreds of thousands of images. I started making mashups of HPL [H.P. Lovecraft] + FP [Fernando Pessoa]the Internet Pandora’s box has opened. First is the static image that appears [with] After the four variations of the prompt, I immediately realized there was a connection between these variations and FP’s synonyms and HPL’s pseudonyms.
Keith Esher Davis, who has performed texts for HPL and FP, was the obvious choice to perform Lovecraft and Pessoa. I think he’s perfect for both voice acting. Unfortunately, he passed away recently so he was unable to watch the film…
In addition to Keith, we also have three female voices telepathic letters ——Victoria Guerra (“Ophelia”) nothingness club), Iris Kayat (Nyarlathotep) lovecraftland) and Barbara Ragido (singer).
In the spring of 2023, we started using the four-second movie generator, and the movie completely changed, because before that we only used HPL or FP talking motion pictures. The first moving images were very crude, but they are still some of my favorite images. This year we planned to create “lost shots,” but we didn’t end up with the same imperfect images that we started with. These beta images are actually footage that never existed.
What can you share with filmmakers and others worried that artificial intelligence might replace them?
Manual labor… Whenever a businessman sees a way to save money by firing employees, he’s going to use it, that’s for sure. Anyone can be replaced. Machines are nothing new in many fields. Now he has entered the entertainment industry. But until then, principled filmmakers are often replaced by amoral human filmmakers who are already looking for a winning formula. There are already people who think like machines, what Philip K. Dick called human robots.
But if we’re talking about making art, that’s a different story. What we did was a low-budget fiction article, and the same number of people made the film as the previous documentary.
Another thing is a matter of style. For Finnish artist Tommi Musturi, style is a capitalist tool, so he uses different styles to express different ideas. I think an artist should have an identity, a voice, but if you make a movie with only one style, the AI will use your style. But this happened before artificial intelligence and was called plagiarism. Or a tribute.
Your film is such a fun and entertaining journey. When I closed my eyes I could still hear some of the deafening music and still see some of the visuals. What do you hope viewers take away from it?
Thank you very much, on behalf of myself and Artur Cyaneto (which means “cyanide” in Portuguese). Some of Cyaneto’s music existed before the film was cut, and some [was used] On my radio show Kinorama. The film starts with an introduction, but then I want the audience to enter a trance state that is a fusion of Pessoa and Lovecraft’s works, and music is a crucial element. Finally, I hope that readers of Lovecraft will want to read Pessoa and vice versa…
What was the biggest challenge with this film?
Most of the AI images and movies I’ve seen so far are terrible. You have to tame the AI algorithm so that it doesn’t start producing very mediocre images. I create hundreds of images every day, so I already have my own playlist of prompts. Sometimes I just write “a man” and the image of Pessoa appears.
It was one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever made. I would wake up and immediately start using my phone to create images. It started out as a toy, then a game, but after writing hundreds of thousands of prompts over a year, I started to think of myself as a puppet. I see myself as a machine, as if this machine had all the fun of playing cinematic roulette with a database of human images.
But of course, like all my films, everything is in the editing. This is where I write.
What do you want to do for your next project?
Well, this is definitely not going to be an artificial intelligence movie; joint stock company — Asphalt GuerrillaThis film, which took place in Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s, is a tragicomedy adapted from real events that occurred after the 1974 Carnation Revolution. But when we “do” telepathic letters (Until the end, it was difficult to choose a word from the process of writing, shooting, and editing that came together.) We made two music videos: loser by tiger man lost in space Author: Sura Barsana.
Is there anything else you’d like to highlight?
One thing I learned when asking questions about Pessoa and Lovecraft while using GPT is that you need to know more about them than you do about GPT. If you don’t, you’re making a mistake, because machines, like the rest of nature, abhor nothingness, and if they don’t know something, they’ll invent it. But this is the most interesting part of artificial intelligence – the illusion of machines, six-fingered hands, kaotyk transformations, unexpected…
PS: Artur Cyaneto and Eduardo Ego [credited with handling the libretto and prompts, respectively, for the movie] are some of my characters.
