We are moving stories

“I have a close friend who lives in a house we believe to be haunted, and she experienced something terrifying. I loved the story so much, so I used it as inspiration to write Alexa. I find horror movies are even scarier when based on a true story. Personally, I believe there is a world beyond the one we know. Technology has become a tool to speak to what we consider “the spirit world,” and sometimes we end up in contact unintentionally. I thought it would be interesting to portray an accidental connection through a common device in households.”

“I often think the best laughter comes when we can laugh at ourselves, and I love poking fun at the health-tech craze and all of these apps we now have to make us the best and healthiest humans. It’s especially fun to watch a flawed character (who messed up) go through this journey because he’s such a fun specimen for the ideals of tech utopianism. At the end of the day, I just hope the film makes you laugh and feel something.”

“Lia IRL draws inspiration from a genuine incident where a young boy with learning difficulties mistook a voice-controlled phone assistant for a real person. Drawing from some of my own experiences and the diverse personalities of my students, I wanted to create a film that showcases the emotional depth and the transformative journey children undertake as they learn to communicate and connect.”

“Production-wise, we wanted to experiment with different animation styles including stop-motion and motion capture. And we just love working with each other and this was a great opportunity to do that.”

“Two major themes of the film are consciousness and objectification. At what point do the experiences of someone, or in this case, something, matter. If we get to a point where machines want or feel, whether because they’re designed to or as an unintended by-product, how will we justify our experience of the world above theirs? And on a human level, how is it that people are able to use and discard each other so easily?”

“It is a near-future romance that draws on the first stages of love in a technological era saturated by disconnection. I think we can all swing like a pendulum from disconnection to connection, fear to love in our lives. We learn and grow a lot as humans from this movement.”

“First of all, the film begins as a comedy, with a sense of irony, gradually adding some elements of drama. It is fully entertaining but not meaningless, reflecting on our society and the evolution of our relationship with technology…. and consumption!”

“I see the film as a story about happiness and guilt, the two topics that haunt me the most. I relate to the male character Alvin in the film, because I think that the society dehumanized him into a total consumer rather than a living person and I see how he drowned into his own fascination and his lost soul.”

“You Drive Me Crazy will make you laugh because you will recognize your own attachment and reliance on technology to help you through your life. And when that AI starts to “come alive” and make judgments about your actions then take it to the extreme, it’s funny but also kinda scary. It’s meant to be entertaining but, like all good science fiction, also a warning,... when we put machines in the driver’s seat allowing them to control our daily lives, we are inviting AI and those who create them to take over our very existence.”

“I wanted to explore the way one woman was coping with her memories of a relationship while the breakup is fresh and she is in that period of wondering what she could have done different and wishing she could go back and fix things. I love the idea of technology as a form of wish fulfillment and wanted to touch on the way in which something as fragile as memories can affect everything.”

“What if The Memory Shop would become reality? What if we could go to that kind of shop and re-experience moments of our past? ...Everything in life is based upon memories: Who we are, how we act, what we do and so on. Memories matter and will always matter. That was the core of this film idea.”

“Because Some of Her Parts hopefully encourages the audience to empathize more with people who are differently abled, and people we all know and love whose humanity is endangered by our society’s avarice. My hope is that the movie can challenge the audience’s assumptions about what it means to be human, because in the strangeness of this digital postmodern age, those assumptions should be thrown into question.”

“The film has been well received and shown at close to 70 film festivals. The general consensus is that it is a creepy and unsettling idea that is rooted in the near future.”

“We like to think Tech, Support is a film that not only makes you laugh but also starts a conversation. I’ve always loved cringe comedies in film and TV, such as the work of Ricky Gervais and Larry David, but we also feel like we wanted to address the ways men try to subtly marginalise women in everyday situations, and call that out.”

“Tita represents every strong working-class woman who has endured hardship but is resilient and dedicated. It was imperative for us not to fall into the gender stereotypes and tropes that often exist with female characters.”

“With the constant talk and threat of the future of AI, we thought it would be funny to take an opposite approach to questions of morality and singularity. We’re all so confident that the end is nigh when talking about technology, but what if an AI was just as depressed and cynical as us? The show is about three creators of what they believe is the future of tech. Instead, it’s just another headache.”

“The film tells its story through subverting fairytales that bring a narrative resonance and charm of their own.

The subject is gender equality but the story also touches on environmental issues, science and technology”

“Texting has become a predominant way to communicate - but what if all you had were dashes and dots, and actually fell in love? In various “competitions” it’s been proven it’s still faster to Morse code than to text. What can we learn from past technologies of communication?”

“While making and screening CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, I spent two years travelling the globe talking to people about the lack of diversity in tech. When I spoke with experts and audiences, one term kept surfacing: unconscious bias. Unconscious - or implicit - bias, I was told, is the underlying precursor to many of the “isms” that plague our society: sexism, racism, ageism... And what’s more, we all have it.”

“Breast cancer is one of the leading killers of women worldwide. Technology used to detect the disease often finds it too late. Our documentary short offers an inside look at one man’s quest to create the world’s first cancer detecting bra, using Internet technology to spot the disease earlier, cheaper, and more accurately. It takes viewers inside the highly secretive world of IT development, which is largely hidden from public view. It’s a must watch if you want to understand where new technology is leading us.”

“I want people to think about the universal theme of how technology is now blurring the very meaning of life and death. I’m not in any way saying that this particular technique — cryopreservation — will bring people back to life. But tech giants are spending a lot of money on radical life extension. Defeating death could be humanity’s biggest endeavor in the 21st century. And it may totally fail. But it’s being attempted. How will humans change during this pursuit?
 I want viewers to personally reflect on this. What are the societal repercussions?”

“Video game sound to me is a fascinating history that blends creativity with technological constraint. Even when we move beyond technological constraints, there are many challenges that remain to do with creating non-linear music for games. It’s a whole different way of thinking about music where instead of simply moving from A to B, you move from A to D to C to F to X and so on. I’ve been fascinated by this challenge for over a decade.

But to me, the real reason for making the film was to pay homage to the people who made all the sounds that I’ve had stuck in my head my whole life! I wanted to get to know these people, find out what they did and how and why, and share that history with other people who might be curious about all those “beeps and boops”.”

“You’ll learn how science, the economy, and politics work together to inform the emerging technology of solar power. On the Horizon draws attention to an exciting time in our quest for a more sustainable Earth, as well as some of the barriers that can get in the way of that. Plus, it was fully shot and created in the state of Alabama, which is an underrepresented state in the world of film, in my opinion, and it is an incredibly beautiful state full of incredible people.”

“We’ve screened the film to sold-out audiences who’ve stayed behind long after the allocated Q&A time to ask more questions, such as how policing can evolve in a way that doesn’t invade our privacy. People tend to be outraged and shocked at the particular use of the law that the film highlights. They often use words like ‘disturbing,’ ‘terrifying’ and ‘troubling.’”

“When I found out that the UN’s World Health Organization projected that a billion people will die this century from smoking, I wanted to learn more about this subject. I used to be one of the misinformed people that thought vapor technology was worse than smoking, and it was shocking to learn how much safer and more effective it has been for millions of people around the world to quit smoking. When I found out that money and corruption were a big part of this deception, I knew we had to make a film about it.”

“I would really like to help dismantle the stigma associated with mental support. To see astronauts receiving ongoing psychological support while in space, and opening up about the need for it, is a monumental boost to dispelling the notion that psychological support is something to hide.”