Göteborg Film Festival’s 'Another Persona' as a Cautious AI Reworking of Swedish Film Canon

A lecture by Dr Jennifer O'Meara (Film Studies) as part of the School of Creative Arts Research Forum.

This paper will provide a case study of the Göteborg Film Festival’s high-profile experiment into generative A.I. cinema, wherein festival director Jonas Holmberg collaborated with the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Gothenburg Film Studios and actresses Alma Pöysti and Liv Ullmann, in order to develop an A.I.-adapted version of Persona (Bergman, 1966) in which Ullman’s face was replaced by that of Pöysti for a one-off festival screening in January 2024. Building on scholarship on emergent uses of, and anxieties around, generative A.I. in the film and broader creative industries (Chow 2020; De Vries 2020; Worrall and Flick 2022), the paper will outline the careful ethical, contractual and creative processes that allowed for this remarkable event, as well as considering the (un)suitability of Persona’s narrative and aesthetic features for an A.I. reworking.
Drawing on interview comments from the project’s creative team, I combine critical analysis of Persona’s legacy as an avant-garde film focused on themes of media technology, identity and doubling with my first-hand experience of the event and its framing as part of the 2024 Göteborg Film Festival’s “Another Intelligence” focus on A.I. and cinema. I will argue that the tension between artistic intentionality and algorithmic randomness which is present in the work highlights the centrality of co-creation (between creative workers and algorithmic tools) to the effective functioning of emergent generative A.I. screen media (see also: O’Meara and Murphy 2023).

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: Nicole.Grimes@tcd.ie