“AI is the most democratic medium”, says filmmaker and IFFI festival director Shekhar Kapur

Known as the director of Elizabeth and Mister India, Shekhar Kapur is relishing the moment that the world is catching on and waking up to his other vocation as an advocate for new technology.

In his second year as festival director of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Kapur is making changes. Most visible is his ditching of the festival opening ceremony and its replacement with a parade.

“We keep saying that we are the India International Film Festival, but actually we are the Goa Film Festival, and I’m pushing towards giving more to Goa,” Kapur tells Screen. “Our opening is going to be a parade, because Goans are fantastic at carnivals and parades.”

More profound is his inclusion of an artificial intelligence (AI) festival within IFFI and the AI Hackathon, a short film creation event that is shared across IFFI and the accompanying Waves Film Bazaar.

Kapur’s reasoning is simple – he sees AI as a force for democratising and spreading cinema in a sector where resources are limited or expensive. That matters in a country that prides itself as the world’s largest democracy.

“India has only 8,000 cinema screens and although we have a huge cinema loving cinema-going population, we just don’t have the screens to support it,” says Kapur. “So, even if TikTok is banned here, cinema and its ancillaries are actually floating out onto other platforms.”

Second, AI brings democracy to filmmaking. “All the studios, whether in the US or here, raise the entry barriers so high that if you are a new filmmaker, you not only have to write great scripts you have to spend your life savings trying to make the film, trying to raise millions of dollars, trying to pay star salaries. Now you don’t have to. You can do something with $200,000. You can do it on $2,000!”, Kapur says.

Industry shake-up

Kapur, who has previously based some of his tech innovations in Dubai, is now working closer to home. In India, he is in the process of setting up an AI-focused film school in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum district. He has also partnered with Larsen & Toubro to underpin the festival’s Hackathon. The Indian engineering giant has established an AI content division with 700 employees.

Kapur likens the arrival of AI to the film industry’s transition from celluloid to digital. Only now, the camera is being becoming increasingly redundant. “A digital camera is data-driven,” he says. “We put that data into a computer to manipulate it. AI does exactly the same thing but without the need for a camera. You are on set, sitting in your room and creating and manipulating new data.”

The industry has been shocked by the emergence of wholly digital characters, such as Tilly Norwood, and by the speed with which AI-generated images are improving, perhaps to the point where they will be indistinguishable from those captured in the real world. But Kapur suggests that AI still has limits.

“I’m developing characters and I expect that AI will develop its own stars,” says Kapur. “But can you make very complex emotional stories [Kapur’s debut feature] Masoom? No, because we can’t replicate complex emotions in close up.”

“However, if you’re making Marvel or Batman movies, the costume is actually more important than the actor. Those kinds of films should be more susceptible to [being challenged by] AI.

“Because AI is democratic, that’s why some people are scared – and they should be. AI represents the flattening of the pyramid, where there was a big difference between the top and the bottom. Well, there isn’t anymore and after all your education, experience and knowledge [is flattened] what are you left with? Intuition. That’s what creativity is about, intuition.”

In both the festival and his proselytising about new technology, Kapur sees himself as a leveller and democratiser. “I am saying give the festival back to the people.” Does he worry that audiences may desert cinemas and forego the collective experience? “No, they will be making their own films.”