Held from July 4 through July 14 at venues in the Seoul satellite city of Bucheon, the 28th edition of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) screened films primarily in the fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres. Both shorts and features, animation and live-action films were on the lineup. A central focus of this year’s Bifan was the advent of generative AI, as symbolized by the festival’s “ identity film ” shown before each screening.
Directed by Hansl von Kwon, the 50-second film paid homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” with a H-shaped monolith that metamorphosed into various forms. An AI female voice assured viewers that “I’m just your mirror.” This assurance was not completely convincing: The film’s AI images had an innate creepiness that made them an unlikely “mirror” for a warm-hearted human drama.
At a reception for a three-day AI conference sponsored by the festival, I chatted with Sten-Kristian Saluveer, a conference keynote speaker and founder and CEO of media tech start-up Storytek. AI, he told me, is democratizing filmmaking. “Film industries in developing countries now have tools that enable them to achieve Hollywood effects at a fraction of a Hollywood budget,” he said.
In other words, AI is an ally of the little guy. That could potentially include the Japanese film industry, whose most successful live-action film abroad this year, “ Godzilla Minus One ,” beat out the $250 million “Guardians of t.