The Garden - What Happens When Artificial Intelligence Gets The Upper Hand

Recently, I was contacted by Dimitri Iyudin to help promote a new short film project he is writing entitled The Garden.  While I know very little about the film, I have watched the teasers, read the press release, and find that I am intrigued by this project.  I find it interesting that someone can tell a complete story in less than 20 minutes and have enjoyed watching several short film projects in the past few months.

Well, rather than me telling you what it is about, here is the press release about The Garden...


New York City, December 1, 2014

Earlier this year during a science event at the MIT Elon Musk said that “with artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.” Coming from anyone else, such fear mongering would’ve been dismissed as just another tech guru being cute. But Musk—a visionary who co-founded PayPal and Tesla Motors, and who now runs SpaceX—has street cred.

Musk’s prescient proclamation inspired a couple—in life and in cinema—to ponder: how does the ceaseless advent of technology shape and guide our lives and are we truly going to innovate ourselves extinct? Having worked on two feature films framed by visions of haywire environment of the future, Natalia and Dmitry Iyudin decided to write a short movie about a post-singularity world ruled by rogue AI.

The story is set in 2089 when Earth is a hostile place for humans who by then are an out-of-date concept. The only way to survive is to integrate into AI constructs at The Garden and live pain-free forever. Yet Luc—a rebellious ballerina—would rather die than conform. But when she meets an odd robot Azul, the idea of integrating into a better version of herself suddenly sounds tempting.

What’s unique about the story is that it’s a hybrid of dark humor, thriller, and sleek technology, told from a female perspective with a fierce teenage ballerina as a protagonist. And yet, the film has a universal appeal with its themes of defiance against a totalitarian regime and a life-affirming right to artistic expression, free of dogmas and censorship.

“The message of The Garden is that in order to stay real, we have to accept our own imperfections,” Polish-American director Natalia Iyudin says. “It’s a story about discovering your true self and fighting for personal freedom no matter what.” Natalia’s previous work includes shorts and music videos that screened worldwide from Oberhausen and Feminale in Germany to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Seoul.

 

Natalia is a New York City based video editor and curator. She’s worked with MoMA, National Gallery of Art, Sony Pictures Classics, PBS, Film Society of Lincoln Center, ESSENCE Magazine, and MTV. She’s also a member of the Film Fatales collective, alongside award-winning directors Gillian Robespierre, Josephine Decker, Anja Marquardt, Eliza Hittman, and Leah Meyerhoff.

The Garden is collaboration between Natalia and writer Dmitry Iyudin (The Russian Heart), award-winning director Bartek Kulas (Millhaven), DP Kamil Plocki (Fourth Dimension), and producers Marta Harasymowicz (Go East Films), Zoe Couacaud, Heather Hollingsworth, and Hypatia Porter, as well as a Production Designer Javiera Varas (Dallas Buyers Club, The Dawn of The Planet of the Apes). The film is scheduled to start production in early March.

Currently, The Garden is in the fundraising stage on KickStarter.  Take a look, see what you think, and consider helping to fund this project.

You may also follow this project on Facebook as well as on Twitter.

 

Well, there it is

QaplaH!