Total Pixel Space, a hypnotic, essayistic 9-minute film by Jacob Adler, won top honors at the third annual AI Film Festival.
Backed by Runway, the growing AI firm valued at more than $3 billion, the one-night festival unfolded Thursday at New York’s Lincoln Center. The setting, Alice Tully Hall, is hallowed ground for the film industry and cinephiles, having hosted the New York Film Festival and other events for decades. (An L.A. edition of the festival is set for Thursday at the Broad Stage Theatre.)
Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela acknowledged the step-up for the fest in its third year, snapping a mobile phone picture of the near-capacity crowd as he reached the lectern.
“Three years ago, this was such a crazy idea,” he said. In 2022, he recalled, the festival received about 300 submissions. The number jumped to 6,000, with filmmakers from around the world.
“This year really feels like we’re at a significant moment,” Valenzuela said. “You can’t miss that AI is everywhere these days. …. This could well be the most important technological shift any of us has seen in our lifetimes.” AI is “beginning to alter the fabric of the culture and, naturally, the art that extends from it.”
The 10 finalists screened at the festival ranged widely in visual style and had running times of between two and 10 minutes. At a press reception prior to the screenings, Runway co-founder Alejandro Matamala Ortiz said, “My goal is to be able to help people create feature-length films. And we’re getting there.”
Runway’s technology is used by creators, filmmakers and a growing number of film and TV entities, including Lionsgate and Fabula, the company founded by Pablo and Juan De Dios Larraín.
After his introductory remarks, Valenzuela welcomed record producer, DJ, filmmaker, and rapper Steven Ellison, who creates under the name Flying Lotus.
“I don’t like walls and boundaries and gatekeepers and all that stuff,” Ellison said. He added that AI technology is particularly helpful for what he called “the ‘f–k around and find out’ method.” Filmmakers “don’t have to necessarily have a preconceived idea or a preconceived vision. You just kind of play around, you know. Suddenly, you’ve got two characters and a weird location and you’re like, ‘I didn’t know that was going to happen.’”
Many of the films appeared to result from that serendipitous approach, displaying hallucinatory, dreamlike and surrealistic qualities. One standout, runner-up finisher Jailbird from director Andrew Salter, is less impressionistic. It uses a documentary style in which the AI flourishes are less obvious to tell the affecting story of a UK initiative to place chickens with prisoners, for their mutual benefit.
