AI – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

University Film and Video Association’s 79th Conference – Diane Carson reports

July 28, 2025July 29, 2025 Diane Carson AI, American Cinema Editors, B&H Photo/Video/Audio, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, Canon USA, Chrissy Guest, fair use, Filmify, Final Draft, kodak, Semester Cinema, Terésa Dowell-Vest, The Pavilion Worldwide Student Program, UFVA, University Film and Video Association, Videndum Production Solutions, Yamdu

The University Film and Video Association’s (UFVA) 79th Conference held from July 21-25, 2025, at
Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, Texas, offered multiple events and experiences. Conference host and UFVA President Terésa Dowell-Vest and UFVA Conference Vice President Chrissy Guest ensured a robust expression of this year’s theme, “Amplifying Excellence: Illuminating Stories, Empowering Voices, Building Futures” through programs that included film screenings, peer-reviewed panels, scriptwriting workshops, and hands-on demonstrations of immersive media. Augmenting those sessions, the New Media exhibit involved several multifaceted, experimental VR projects that were as much fun as they were educational.

Reviews

LOVE ME – Review by Justina Walford

January 29, 2025January 28, 2025 Justina Walford AI, Kristen Stewart, LOVE ME, Sam Zuchero, scifi, Steven Yeun, Zazu Myers

Well, I guess this is me now. I’m a 54-year-old woman who knew a world before computers and is now writing a review about a romantic drama involving a buoy and a satellite, talking to a friend about AI being used to talk to dead people, and lovingly asking Alexa to remind me to take out the trash. If you told me I would see all the science fiction I read as a child become reality, I would be giddy with excitement for adulthood. I’m sometimes as giddy as younger me would be, but more often I’m baffled. How do I fit into this world where sentience is a gray area? So on that note, let’s review Love Me, Sam Zuchero’s directorial debut about a buoy looking at a satellite, asking him to love her. And please, let’s not get too existential here. It’s just chunks of metal falling in love…without the existence of humanity. I liked Love Me, I didn’t love it. But it’s exploring two very profound concepts we, as a society are urgently grappling with: the end of humanity and the realization that sentience is not exclusive to the human experience. And for that, it is an important watch.

Reviews

HERE – Review by Susan Granger

November 4, 2024November 5, 2024 Susan Granger AI, digital de-aging, Here, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Ophelia Lovibond, Paul Bettany, Robert Zemeckis, tom hanks

Robert Zemeckis is a courageous, innovative filmmaker. Never resting on his Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Cast Away laurels, he’s obsessed with technology and its countless possibilities. With the camera firmly fixed on a wide-angle vantage point, his newest film – Here – traces one particular living space through the prism of time. Set on a New England plot of land, Zemeckis’ visual perspective never changes while everything around it does. Beginning before recorded time, Indigenous people lived there. Then came the settlers, including Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son who built a huge colonial manor across the street.

Reviews

HERE – Review by T. J. Callahan

October 30, 2024October 31, 2024 T. J. Callahan AI, Here, Kelly Reilly, Paul Bettany, robert zemekis, robin wright, time travel, tom hanks

It’s about time Tom Hanks and Robin Wright got back together with their Forrest Gump director Robert Zemekis for a film about time. They all reunited for the drama/fantasy, Here, and it feels…like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Zemekis, known for his technologically creative film, uses AI to take us from the dawn of time to the 21st century in this generational story of families told from a single vantage point. The director successfully de-ages and ages not only Hanks and Wright, but also Kelly Reilly and Paul Bettany along with several other “tribes” in a historical look at how one single location affects those who inhabit it.

Reviews

SO UNREAL – Review by Nadine Whitney

October 3, 2023October 9, 2023 Nadine Whitney AI, amanda kramer, Britt Brown, cyber cinema, Debbie Harry, documentary, fantastic fest 2023, scifi, So Unreal, virtual reality

In essence all gods are created by humanity as a way to explain the unknown or as a system of moral and ethical guidelines. That isn’t to say that spirituality is a falsehood, but it is perpetuated by earthly entities. In the digital age humanity created a new god – a cyber god of unlimited potential, and one that carried with it the capacity to gain sentience and turn on its maker. Amanda Kramer’s documentary So Unreal written in conjunction with Britt Brown and narrated by actor and musician Debbie Harry traces how cinema near the end of the millennia reacted to the anxiety of emerging technology and how films that might have been seen as time-capsule curiosities became remarkably prescient.

Interviews

Amanda Kramer and Britt Brown on SO UNREAL – Nadine Whitney interviews

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 Nadine Whitney AI, amanda kramer, Britt Brown, cyber cinema, Debbie Harry, documentary, scifi, So Unreal, virtual reality

Amanda Kramer and Britt Brown discuss the lure and fear of the early internet in So Unreal. Amanda Kramer is best known as a director of independent fiction films. Delighting and confounding audiences with such titles as Ladyworld, Give Me Pity!, and Please Baby Please. In a script written in conjunction with Britt Brown, Kramer delivers a stunning visual essay documentary So Unreal about “cyber cinema.” Nadine Whitney spoke to Kramer and Brown about their work that debuted at Fantastic Fest 2023.>

Reviews

A.RTIFICIAL I.MMORTALITY – Review by Liz Braun

January 7, 2022January 9, 2022 Liz Braun A.rtificial I.mmortality, AI, Ann Shin, canadian films., Christian Transhumanist Association, cyberconsciousness, Deepak Chopra, documentaries, robotics, Terasem Movement

A.rtificial I.mmortality is an intriguing documentary from Ann Shin about the pursuit of everlasting life. What used to be the purview of religion is increasingly being handed off to the tech world in the 21st century. Can we live forever?

Movie of the Week Reviews

MOVIE OF THE WEEK November 13, 2020: CODED BIAS

November 8, 2020November 12, 2020 Jennifer Merin 0 Comments AI, algorithmic justice, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, Coded Bias, documentaries, jennifer merin, Joy Buolamwini, kathia woods, marina antunes, maryann johanson, motw, Movie of the Week, nell minow, nikki baughan, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, Shalini Kantayya, susan wloszczyna

Designed largely by white men, it turns out that a lot of facial-recognition programs are best at recognizing…white men. So when those technologies are used to scan the faces of women and people of color, they’re far more likely to make incorrect associations and conclusions. Inconvenient if you want to use your face to open a biometric lock; potentially devastating if a database suggests you’re a terrorist.

Reviews

CODED BIAS – Review by Leslie Combemale

November 5, 2020November 8, 2020 Leslie Combemale 0 Comments AI, algorithmic justice, Coded Bias, documentaries, Joy Buolamwini, motw, Movie of the Week, Shalini Kantayya

Director Shalini Kantayya brings us Coded Bias, a documentary that rightly feeds fears on a subject many have blithely ignored, the increasing control technology is having over the world, and in every aspect of life. Worse, it is pervasively anchored in bias, expanding disparity in wealth, education, health, safety, and so much more. The film is an eye-opening examination of just how little the public is aware of how and when they are being watched, categorized, pigeonholed, and discarded, often because of their gender, race, or background, more often than not erroneously.

Reviews

CODED BIAS – Review by Susan Wloszczyna

November 5, 2020November 8, 2020 Susan Wloszczyna 0 Comments AI, algorithmic justice, Coded Bias, documentaries, Joy Buolamwini, motw, Movie of the Week, Shalini Kantayya

In Coded Bias, the charismatic Joy Buolamwini, a student at MIT, calls out the lack of legislation and oversight over the use of such invasive facial recognition and other algorithmic tools and how governments use such tech to unfairly judge people. For instance, Amazon employed an algorithm to select a first cut of job applicants, only to find it picked only white males. That reflects the culture of Silicon Valley, which is controlled by primarily white males.

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