Alpha Film Festival

In 2023 I undertook the role of artistic director for the the first-ever metaverse film festival, the Alpha Film Festival. This role involved the curation of all of the 30 films that screened as part of the festival’s four sections - the 12 films of the Official Selection and the 18 films that comprised three themed programmes titled ‘Present is Prologue’, ‘Behold This Strange Intelligence’ and ‘Kings of Infinite Space.’

Twelve short films that used a variety of different styles, techniques, genres and even mediums to engage with the central theme of the Alpha Film Festival - ‘The Future.’

• 3 Dialogues About the Future (2022 · Alina Manolache · Romania)
• Agrilogistics (2022 · Gerard Ortín Castellví · UK/Spain)
• Aralkum (2022 · Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhluktenko · Uzbekistan/Germany)
• The Arrival of Aliens (2021 · Guan Tian, Lin Junjie · China)
• Brutalia, Days of Labour (2021 · Manolis Mavris · Greece/Belgium)
• The Future Isn't What It Used To Be (2021 · Adeyemi Michael · UK)
• How to Disappear (2020 · TOTAL REFUSAL · Austria)
• Persona (2022 · Sujin Moon · South Korea)
• S.O.S (2021 · Sarah Hafner · France)
• Successful Thawing of Mr. Moro (2021 · Jerry Carlsson · Sweden)
• The Unborn (2022 · Thomas Frank · Germany)
• Zombies (2019 · Baloji · Democratic Republic of Congo, Belgium)

A themed shorts programme of films that use a variety of different perspectives to create linkages that cast our present – or indeed, our future – as histories to be mined and excavated.

• Urth (2016 · Ben Rivers · UK)
• Scientists now discover new evidence to reconstruct the ecology of A.D.2021 (2021 · Wenqing Yao · China)
• Without Friction (2018 · Timo Bredenberg · Finland)
• Red Gaia (2022 · Udesh Chetty · India)
• World of Tomorrrow (2015 · Don Hertzfeldt · USA)
• The World After: Visions of the Deep Past (2020 · David Blandy · UK)

A themed shorts programme that engages in several ways with notions of artificial intelligence, from fiction shorts that envisage the complexities of non-human intelligence to shorts with AI input and collaboration.

• Drone (2022 · Sean Buckelew · USA)
• I Am (2021 · Jerry Hoffman · Germany)
• Forever (2021 · Mitch McGlockin · USA)
• All Her Beautiful Green Remains in Tears (2018 · Amy Cutler · UK)
• This Desolate Shore (2022 · Chris Peters · USA)

A shorts programme exploring the boundaries between cinema and video games. Consisting primarily of films made in-game environments – machinima – the shorts in this programme will often probe the societies reflected by our cultural creations.

• Onlookers (2021 · Steffanie Padilla · USA)
• The Voice in the Hollow (2022 · Miguel Ortega · USA)
• 99 Problems [Wasted] (2014 · Georgie Roxby Smith · USA)
• Counter-Charge (2015 · Alex Hovet · USA)
• Rock, Star, North (2021 · Calum Rodger · UK)
• Heavy Thoughts (2019 · Jonne Hansson · Sweden)
• Martin Cries (2017 · Jonathan Vinel · France)