Look at Life: Figure It Out

A narrative/documentary/experimental hybrid about a man who buys a new technology to record his dreams. Created in December 2023 for the FILMMAKING 1: FUNDAMENTALS final at the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how we have created machines that can simulate, augment, and even outperform the human mind - and why we shouldn't let this spook us. He reveals the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and the recent breakthroughs brought about by artificial neural networks. He shows how AI is not only changing our world but also challenging our very ideas of intelligence and consciousness. Along the way, we'll investigate spam filters, meet a cutting-edge chatbot, look at why a few altered pixels makes a computer think it's looking at a trombone rather than a dog and talk to Demis Hassabis, who heads DeepMind and whose stated mission is to 'solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else'. Stephen Hawking remarked 'AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. Or the worst'. Jim argues that AI is a potent new tool that should enhance our lives, not replace us.

Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cutting edge technologies and their influence on our culture as we approach the 21st century. It takes off from the idea that mankind's effort to tap the power of Nature has been so successful that a new world is suddenly emerging,an artificial reality. Virtual Reality, digital and biotechnology, plastic surgery and mood-altering drugs promise seemingly unlimited powers to our bodies, and our selves. This film presents the implications of having access to such power as we all scramble to inhabit our latest science fictions.

AVATARA is not a cartoon. It's a documentary about an Internet subculture who spend their lives immersed in an online 3-D voice-chat program called "Digitalspace Traveler." Through a series of 14 interviews, we uncover the history, art, identities, struggles and emotions of this unique internet community who, since as far back as 1996 have mostly devoted their lives to this software.

Documentary looking at the ways which computer on-line services and the Internet have evolved, how they have been applied and the problems they can cause.

More Than Robots follows four international teams of teenagers as they prepare for the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition. Get to know competitors from Los Angeles, Mexico City and Chiba, Japan as they work towards the ultimate goal of taking their unique designs all the way to the highly competitive global championships. Along the way they must overcome challenges such as having limited resources or putting everything on hold because of the COVID pandemic. The kids persevere and learn that there is a lot more to the competition than just robots.

Portrait of the early era of computing which examines the workings of a new and mysterious machine: the Canada Land Inventory Geo-information System. This "instant library" was created to help assess and document the geographical landscape, including sampling and analysis of soil, forestry, timber, wildlife, resources, industrial sites, and many other aspects.

From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?

An audiovisual experiment that shows how oil is refined into gasoline and ultimately powers cars and other vehicles, accompanied by classical music and experimental synthesizer sounds. Filmed in the Libyan desert, the film traces the path and development of the gasoline, from the extraction of oil as it is drilled in the Libyan desert to the pump at the gas station, making road construction machines dance and convertibles roar through the Spessart forests. This film also drew Herbert von Karajan and Leo Kirch's attention to Hugo Niebeling, in which the director has road bulldozers "dance" to the music of Vivaldi.

Cold War film illustrating the defense capacity of America's telephone network, highlighting AT&T's role in the design and construction of the nation's integrated defense structure, including the Distant Early Warning Line and the North American Air Defense Command. In the dramatic ending, rockets and missiles are fired at hostile forces in a readiness exercise and score a direct hit.

The WDR Computer-Night tells the Story from the first Computer and PCs the Start of the WWW, Searchengines, Social Networks, Cybersex and Cyberspace, Web 2.0, Smartphones and Flashmobs.

We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware".

Follow Barbara Dunkelman and Blaine Gibson as they must survive their work, their social lives and the modern world without the comfort of their cell phones in order to explore how our brains change with our use of technology and analyze how we sustain and build relationships in the 21st century.

Explore how in the past five decades, the internet has changed the very fabric of our society, highlighted by interviews with the founders of AOL, Craigslist, Friendster, Match, and Tinder.

Thom Andersen's remarkable and sadly neglected hour-long documentary adroitly combines biography, history, film theory, and philosophical reflection. Muybridge's photographic studies of animal locomotion in the 1870s were a major forerunner of movies; even more interesting are his subsequent studies of diverse people, photographed against neutral backgrounds.

With a magical new invention that promised to revolutionize blood testing, Elizabeth Holmes became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, heralded as the next Steve Jobs. Then, overnight, her 10-billion-dollar company dissolved. The rise and fall of Theranos is a window into the psychology of fraud.

Ada Lovelace was a most unlikely computer pioneer. In this film, Dr Hannah Fry tells the story of Ada's remarkable life. Born in the early 19th century, Ada was a countess of the realm, a scandalous socialite and an 'enchantress of numbers'. The film is an enthralling tale of how a life infused with brilliance, but blighted by illness and gambling addiction, helped give rise to the modern era of computing.

The deadliest weapon on the battlefield is neither the bullet nor the gun-it's the lone sniper. Through the scopes of the world's most precise marksmen SNIPER: INSIDE THE CROSSHAIRS takes you on a journey to discover the science and psychology behind the most extreme shots in military history. Deconstruct well-known missions from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan by hearing firsthand recollections from the soldiers who were there and whose fingers pulled the triggers. Finally meet Canadian sniper Rob Furlong who for the first time on American television tells the story of his history-making shot in Afghanistan-striking a Taliban fighter from 1.5 miles away. Ballistics tactics weaponry stalking--this feature-length special examines these critical components in vivid detail and uses compelling interviews cinematic reenactments CGI technology and modern-day shooting demonstrations to put you squarely inside the crosshairs.

In 1981, Wau Holland and other hackers established the Hamburg based Chaos Computer Club (CCC). The idiosyncratic freethinkers were inspired by Californian technology visionaries and committed themselves to hacker ethics. All information must be free. Use public data, protect private data. But not everyone followed the rules. Computer technology was still in its infancy and the emerging Internet became a projection screen for social utopias. What has become of them? The story of the German hackers, told by the protagonists themselves in a montage of found video and audio material.

A feature animated-documentary that focuses on sex and romantic connections featuring 21 diverse interviews with people from a wide range of genders, cultural backgrounds, abilities, and sexual orientations as they discuss Sex, Monogamy, Fear and Technology. The film is also collaboration of our production staff and 17 animators from 10 countries.