Media Arts & Culture (MAC) Professor Aleem Hossain showcased “Three Weird Short Films” Feb. 6 to students, professors and Occidental community members at Choi Auditorium. A Q&A session followed the screening, moderated by Jonathan Wysocki, an award-winning local filmmaker, previous visiting professor at Occidental and long-time peer of Hossain.
Hossain said the short films are recent works, most of which were made during the pandemic as a creative break from larger-scale film projects.
“The through-line of these pieces is a real desire to experiment and work quickly,” Hossain said.
The films spanned a range of subject matter, from robots to astronauts to a pile of discarded VHS tapes. Hossain said that what makes these films “weird” is their experimental, process-based and non-narrative styles.
“I love the fact that these films are hard to categorize and are unusual in terms of what they’re about, how they’re made and how they use the cinematic form,” Hossain said. “I also use weird a little defensively, which is to say, I want to signal to my audience. I want to set their expectations.”
Played together at the screening, the films shared a run time of 20 minutes. Each combined elements of mixed-media photography, animation and AI generation.
Wysocki said he identified experimental and science-fiction qualities across all of the films and a contemplative undertone to Hossain’s work.
“I think that there are things [Hossain] wants to say about who we are now, but connected to who we were in the past, and I think all [these] films do that,” Wysocki said.
As both creators and educators in the film sphere, Wysocki and Hossain’s conversation about the short films’ content and forms drove the post-screening Q&A. The discussion also focused heavily on Hossain’s most recent work of the collection, “Do Bangladroids Dream of Electric Tagore?” The film premiered last year at Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the country, and is currently on the festival circuit.
The documentary-style short illustrates a futuristic, dystopian neighborhood of New Jersey where “Bangladroids” populate the streets in varying forms of decay, reciting verses by the Indian-Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. The film ends with a robot reciting Tagore’s poem “Freedom,” whose verses share familiar echoes to the ongoing debate about the use of AI in creative fields.
During the Q&A, Hossain said he created the film using open AI softwares Midjourney and ElevenLabs to generate animations and voice-overs. The work, Hossain said, was an experiment with AI in filmmaking.
“I consciously made the film not yet comfortable with whether we [as filmmakers] should use these tools at all,” Hossain said.
Hossain said he was open to disagreement regarding his choice to use AI, and voiced his own concerns about the AI debates surrounding the film industry, specifically around intellectual property and labor-related issues.
“I want to be a part of that conversation, right? But there is a risk,” Hossain said.
Alexia Lara (junior) said she had come to the event specifically to see “Bangladroids.”
“[Professor Hossain] had been mentioning these films in class, and I was specifically interested in the AI film because he mentioned that it was entirely made of AI and I just wanted to see what that would look like,” Lara said. “I think, as someone who wants to potentially be in the film industry, I’m also worried about AI.”
Hossain said he felt it was better to try to understand changes surrounding AI than to shun the technology as it advances. Working on “Bangladroids,” Hossain said, helped him gain some footing in AI practices.
“Now, having done it, I don’t have all my questions answered, but I now understand more what the tools can and will be able to do, which I do think puts me in a better position to think about, how do we respond?” Hossain said.
After the screening, Lara said it was interesting to see how a filmmaker could use AI as a tool.
“I think it just kind of put into perspective that [AI is] not necessarily a hindrance towards art but more so another tool, the same way a brush is to an artist,” Lara said.
Wysocki said experimental work is important in a field where feature-length, narrative blockbusters tend to steal the spotlight.
“I had my interpretation [of the films], which I shared with people tonight, but everybody in that room is gonna walk out of here with different ideas about what they thought or felt watching those movies,” Wysocki said.
Hossain said he plans to continue experimenting in his creative endeavors and with his students in the future. Hossain said he is hoping to teach a film class that will reckon with tools like AI.
“It’s like a class where we may all be skeptical,” Hossain said. “But let’s get into the muck, get a little dirty, and if we decide we want to wash off afterwards, that’s fine, but let’s play with it a little bit.”
Contact Molly Malin at mmalin@oxy.edu
