Let’s talk about AI in cinema. Vilnius Short Film Festival invites to a double-event under Liubartas bridge

Vilnius Short Film Festival invites you to delve into the currently popular and rather controversial topic of artificial intelligence creation. During the “Deep Rivers Run Silent”, the festival presents a two-part event, focusing on AI: a presentation of animation director and lecturer Antanas Skučas, who works with artificial intelligence tools, and a screening of a short film programme “Algorithmic Mirages”. The event will take place on 12 August, 20 pm, under Lubartas bridge, attendance is free of charge.
Antanas Skučas is one of the first Lithuanian animators who actively uses new artificial intelligence (AI) tools in his creative process. During his interactive presentation, A. Skučas will talk about how artificial intelligence is changing the field of animation, pointing out the challenges and benefits of working with AI. A. Skučas will demonstrate AI tools which can be used to generate background images, characters, objects and even entire animations. He will share examples of his animation projects created with the help of AI tools (films “Čiurlionis AI”, and “Planets and Robots”).
After the lecture, Antanas will present the short film programme “Algorithmic Mirages”, which he curated for the Vilnius Short Film Festival held in January. In this programme, artificial intelligence will take the audience on a puzzling tour of synthetic films made using AI tools, as well as films exploring the topic. The programme will make you question what is real and what is a mirage of algorithms and will leave you with more questions than answers. Nor will you ever know whether this text has been written by man or machine.
Vilnius Short Film Festival is one of the biggest short film festivals in the Baltic countries, presenting the newest and best short films from around the world. The 18th edition of the Vilnius Short Film Festival will take place from 15 to 21 January 2025.
Event program:
12 August / 20:00 Antanas Skučas interactive presentation on using AI tools in animation (60 min., only in Lithuanian language)
12 August / 21:00 Screening of “Algorithmic Mirages” programme (67 min., films with Lithuanian and English subtitles, for people form 16 years old)
“Algorithmic Mirages” programme:
The Crow
Dir. Glenn Marshall / UK / animation / 2021 / 3 min.
In this animation, artificial intelligence is used to transform a dancer into a crow. The result is a haunting and compelling piece that follows the crow through its brief dance in a landscape of post-apocalyptic barrenness, to its inevitable demise.
PLSTC
Dir. Laen Sanches / France / animation / 2022 / 2 min.
Welcome to the world of PLSTC, an undersea dystopia that submerges you in the disturbing reality of plastic pollution. Through a series of graphically confronting AI-generated and hand-composited images, this animated film confronts you with the devastating consequences of our habits on marine life and leaves you gasping for breath.
Backflip
Dir. Nikita Diakur / Germany, France / animation / 2022 / 12 min.
Attempting a backflip is not safe. You can break your neck, or land on your head, or land badly on your wrists. None of that is nice, so my avatar does the trick. It practices on a 6-core processor with the help of Machine Learning. The processor is not the newest but still calculates 6 jumps per iteration. One iteration takes one minute, this is 360 jumps in an hour and 8.640 jumps in a day. I wouldn’t be able to jump so much myself.
Hardly Working
Dir. Total Refusal / Austria / documentary / 2022 / 21 min.
Hardly Working sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs. They are non-player characters that populate the digital world as extras to create the appearance of normality. A laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are Sisyphus machines, whose labour routines, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.
Delivery Dancer’s Sphere
Dir. Ayoung Kim / South Korea / experimental / 2023 / 25 min.
Ernst Mo is a rider for the powerful courier service Delivery Dancer. Every day, she transports an endless stream of parcels, following algorithmically generated routes through a labyrinthine, technofuturist Seoul. After she runs into an alternative version of herself, her reality slowly starts to crack.