Cinema in the Age of AI: Highlights from the 64th AAFF

February 20, 2026

Left: Still from 42 by John Weise Center: Still from Transmissions by Chris May Right: Still from Dream Synth™ by Ryley O’Byrne

The history and evolution of experimental moving image art is intertwined with technological innovation. Artists have always embraced new media as explorers. We test tools and materials, seek their edges and limitations, push beyond intended uses, discover inherent properties which inform what is possible in creating new aesthetics and expressions.

This year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival includes six short films that engage with generative AI in that same exploratory spirit, approaching AI as an open question. Screening across multiple shorts in competition programs throughout the week, this work offers a window on how artists are currently wrestling with AI’s creative and cultural implications, each in their own distinct way.

Jennifer Proctor’s AI Movie screens in the opening night Films in Competition 1 program on Tuesday, March 24 at 8:15 PM. The film is the latest iteration in Proctor’s ongoing exploration of Bruce Conner’s 1958 A Movie. After remaking Conner’s work in 2010 using YouTube and LiveLeak footage, Proctor now reconstructs it entirely with generative AI. The work reflects on what we can understand about a time and its culture through the media that survives, and the questions AI raises about authorship, process, and iteration.

An award-winning and internationally recognized media artist, Proctor will unpack her approach in a free festival salon on Thursday, March 26, at 10:30 AM at Third Mind Books, “I’ve Created a Monster: Generative AI, Found Footage Filmmaking, and the Archive Effect,” in which the ethical and creative questions raised by generative AI and its relationship to archival and experimental practices will be explored.

Transmissions by Chris May opens the Films in Competition 4 shorts program on Thursday, March 26 at 7:30 PM. The two-minute short translates sound into intricate visual compositions, exploring perception at the intersection of auditory and visual experience.

Opening Films in Competition 6 on Friday, March 27 at 5:30 PM is 42 by Ann Arbor artist John Weise, which reimagines Lou Reed’s “Andy’s Chest” as a surreal encounter between an AI self-portrait and a pink bear in a 1970s living room, blending song, AI narration, and cultural references.

David R. Witzling’s Algorithmic Nudes Grapple with Entropy plays in Films in Competition 11 on Saturday, March 28 at 7:30 PM. Produced over months on a home supercomputer cluster, thousands of AI-generated images were refined, paired, and animated using AnimateDiff, with layered sound from granular synthesis, field recordings, and mechanical textures, creating a detailed work on time, entropy, and process.

Climate Control by Sarah Lasley appears in Films in Competition 12 on Saturday, March 28 at 9:30 PM. This experimental documentary follows a filmmaker whose project is repeatedly interrupted by a cheerful AI agent. Lasley intentionally used no generative AI, representing the AI’s influence through low-budget visual effects, and the project reflects on activism, collaboration, and creative process.

Films in Competition 12 on Saturday, March 28 at 9:30 PM concludes with Ryley O’Byrne’s Dream Synth™, a speculative meta-documentary that imagines a near future in which humans trade their dreams for energy and immersive virtual reality. When machines begin to dream, the film reflects on what is lost when consciousness is reduced to data, concluding the AAFF shorts programs on a note of surreal speculation.

Together, these films reflect a moment in which artists are actively exploring the contours of the medium and its implications as a force on humanity. AAFF provides a space for this work to be experienced collectively on the big screen, and considered in dialogue with the best experimental moving image work of the day.

We invite you to seek out these films at the upcoming festival, where experimentation and critical engagement with emerging technologies have long found a home.

Passes for the 64th Ann Arbor Film Festival are on sale now at a discounted rate through February 28—check back on March 1 for the full festival lineup and get ready to grab tickets.

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