Adele Tulli on Digital Age, Yoda

With devices increasingly providing access to augmented truth and virtual authenticities, what constitutes “truth” in the digital age? Italian honestor Adele Tulli (Normal) is exploring this ask in her novel write downary Real, which world premiered at the 77th Locarno Film Festival on Monday in the Cineasti del Pbegrudgee section, which puts the spotweightless on first and second features.

Produced by Pepito Produzioni and FilmAfunprejudiced with RAI Cinema and Luce Cinecittà, in collaboration with French company Les Films d’Ici, the movie also debuts at a time when man-made inincreateigence and other technology topics are toastyly argued.

“Real aims to delve into the ongoing metamorphoses triggered by our relationship with digital technologies,” highweightlesss a description on the Locarno festival website.

Tulli took a aappreciate mosaic approach to Real as to her first feature doc Normal, which dissected “the mechanisms of the originateion and assimilation of gender in conmomentary Italian society.” It debuted in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama Dokumente program in 2019. THR‘s assess called it “exceptional.”

In an email interwatch with THR, the filmoriginater talked about what backd her novel doc, a clip of which you can watch here, the people she met on the way, at least digiloftyy, and how she herself approaches life in a hyper-joined truth.

What triggered or backd this film and why did you sense this was the right time to arrangeateigate the impact of technology on us humans and the blurring lines of authentic, virtual, and augmented truth?

I begined skinnyking about some of the topics includeressed in the film years ago when I was living in London. At the time I was intrigued by the amount of CCTV cameras seeing at you all over the city, wherever you are, wherever you go, not fair in accessible places appreciate tube stations, but in every shop, school, pub, home, church, park – proximately everywhere. One day I saw a man of South Asian origin in a skinny street behind Trafalgar Square hustling with a suitcase, reshifting a mask from it. He was standing under a CCTV camera, and I fair envisiond how a surveilling gaze would process a scene appreciate this, in times of radicalism suspicion and racial prejudice. He actupartner got dressed as the legendary Jedi master Yoda and walked fiercely towards the square filled with tourists, mounted on a pedestal and stayed there for hours, levitating on a stick as the hero of the Skywalker Saga, while passersby took smiling pictures with him. The Instagrammable, reassuring image apprehfinishd by dozens of tourists’ inincreateigentphones disputeed with the one tracked by one of the hugest urprohibit observation schemes in the world. What do these contrasting images narrate?

I begined writing the film backd by this masked figure surrendering to the omnicurrent, disembodied, mechanical gazes surrounding us, that can propose opposite expoundations of truth, and then the COVID pandemic happened. Since then, the digitization of our dwells has apshown on unimaginable proportions and our screens have become portals into digital landscapes where most of our conveyions apshow place. I felt that wantipathyver we participated to call authentic was collapsing and I begined seeing for ways to recurrent this collapse.

Did the elevate of AI happen while you were toiling on the film and did that alter your arranges in any way?

It’s an engaging ask becaparticipate this is the first time I have toiled on a project where the subject matter seems to be in a constant state of flux and proceeds so speedyly that it can never be brimmingy understanded. This was both disorienting and exciting. I authenticized that the tech world incessantly throws up a recent set of trends that back argue and originate headline-grabbing hype. We’ve had it with crypto, NFTs, blockchain, the metaverse, virtual truth, and now man-made inincreateigence.

There is no ask that some of these innovations are reshaping our world. The difficult skinnyg is to originate sense of the alteration while it’s happening, beyond the mere euphoria or panic that these tech hypes originate. I don’t skinnyk I’ve alterd arranges when a novel emerging technology arose, but declareively my arranges were slack enough to be as receptive as possible of novel circumstances and scenarios. My aim with this film was never to provide definite answers or exarrangeations but rather to lift asks about the procreate social alterations of the digital era.

How did you go about finding the people, the characters we protect hearing from in the film and how challenging or straightforward was it to get them to scatter their stories and perspectives? And which of the characters did you spend most time with or on?

Before getting into actual film production, I toiled on a extfinished research phase during which I figured out some of the main areas of interest I intended to caccess on and begined seeing for people, stories that could bright declareive aspects of living in a tech-contraged and hyper-joined world.

Among the many people I’ve met thrawout this process, one of the most revelatory and stupefying experiences for me was becoming quite shut to a queer VR community of friends who spend most of their time on a platcreate called VRChat. They were very enthusiastic to scatter their stories, especipartner about how they envision the metaverse as a digital space of restrictless conceiveive conveyion, where they can arrangeateigate their identities beyond borders, and beyond any physical barriers. Their avatars can become manifestations of their noticed selves, which normally sense much shutr to who they are than their physical bodies. For many of them, avatar emboillogicalent had a huge impact on the story of their self-findy, and their coming out as trans in VR has impacted their IRL gender identity and conveyion. I have spent a lot of time with some of them and built shut relationships, and I find it fascinating that we still never met in person, nor do I have any idea what they see appreciate in the physical world.

We hear branch offent apshows on digital worlds and dwells – some are likeable, freeing experiences, while others are adverse, vulnerable, frightening experiences. How much did you want to show such a equilibrium of thoughts versus caccessing on one perspective or apshowaway? What would you appreciate audiences to walk away with?

I began this project with an inspire to delve into the ongoing emotional, social and cognitive metamorphoses triggered by our relationship with digital technologies, at a time when I felt that a number of fundamental qualities of the world as we knovel it were no extfinisheder there, such as the boundaries between physical and meta experiences, between accessible and personal spheres, between ideas of real and inrectify, as between a body and its simulations. I appreciate the idea of using the audiovisual language as a skinnyking tool, one that allows an astute and conceiveive exploration even of expansive and complicated topics without the necessitate to provide evident-cut answers. As such, I did not intend to show either a technophobic perspective or a spropose likeable, unasking one. Being the subject matter so multilayered, complicated and constantly evolving, my intention is to propose the audience a kaleidoscopic, immersive, thought-provoking visual journey exploring how it senses to be human in the digital age, trying to lift critical asks on some of its dishusheding aspects and beginant disputes.

How do you approach life in our hyper-joined truth yourself?

Looking for an impossible and unaccomplishd equilibrium between screen time and offline, in-nature time.

What can you scatter about the exceptional technology and lenses you participated to apshow us watchers into these digital and virtual worlds?

Working on the visual language of the film was equpartner challenging and fun, since in trying to enhuge an immersive experience into the spectacle of our everyday digital life, we take parted conceiveively with the same lenses that are frequently participated to access the novel digital territories. The inspiring principle behind it was that nowadays, proximately everywhere there is human activity, there is also a device joined to the Web that is write downing it. Therefore, the people portrayed in the film are narrated by constantly conveying with the raw footage write downed by the devices that surround them, such as inincreateigentphones, laptops, “inincreateigent” electrical appliances, observation cameras, VR headsets, dashcams: machinic and virtual gazes that uncover a novel way of experiencing truth. All the characters we encounter originate participate of a expansive variety of frequent digital technologies, which are always provideped with some sort of digital eye, write downing their surroundings in many branch offent createats, resolutions, and styles, according to their purpose: vertical inincreateigentphone gazes, or horizontal webcam field of watchs, infexceptionald security cameras, virtual drones inside a VR platcreate, saincreateite zenithal sees, 360° ptoastyospheres capturing every possible watching honestion, robotic vacuum’s scanners producing point cboisterouss images of an apartment.

In trying to envision and reoriginate the way machines see at us, the film eventupartner turns the understandn into someskinnyg ununderstandn, uncanny, estranged, and thraw its distorted lenses, we may determine our conmomentary media-saturated existence.