If AI is coming for filmmakers, don’t tell director Damien Hauser.
In his latest feature, “Memory of Princess Mumbi,” which premieres in the Venetian Era sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, the young Swiss Kenyan filmmaker imagines retrofutistic Africa set in the aftermath of a fierce war, creating a visual paper rich in artificial intelligence.
Results – A playful, bittersweet metafiction that is some love stories, some mockmentaries, this film easily admits that Hauser couldn’t make without AI, even if he set out to “make a film that AI can’t make.”
“Memories of Princess Mumbie” is set in 2093 as young documentary director Koube (Abraham Joseph), and travels to the Kingdom of Umata to document the aftermath of the Great War. There he meets Mumbhi (Chandra Upondi), a free spirited actress who challenges him to make a film without using AI. What begins as a playful debate about the relationship between art, creativity and technology quickly leads to an unfortunate romance, leading to the tragic death of a young princess.
“Memory of Princess Mumbi” is a collaboration with Hauserfilm and is produced by My Mind Mind Films. Produced by Hauser, co-produced by Kaleem Aftab and Shandra Apondi, and supported by the Red Sea Film Fund.
The film came from a difficult period in the director’s life as he mourned the loss of his younger brother. While he sifted through a video recording of the era of joy the brothers shared, Hauser decided to create something at the intersection of loss and memory.
The decision conveyed the film’s background in the “Princess Mumbie” film, as if Coobe were to try and praise his lost love through the film, even if he became one of the most sought after directors on the planet. Utilizing the most of affordable AI technology, Hauser has his imagination at his disposal, creating a clever montage of Kuve’s fun, sticky film output, giving a disappointing cry to the very Venice daily showcase.
“Princess Mumbie” was mainly filmed on the coast of Kenya. “The lighting, the shadows, everything was real,” Hauser says. The director was filmed using “old techniques from the ’80s and ’90s that were just depicted in the image” to build the background of his future world.
The software can generate images with flash, but the director found these images much more difficult to do “work in the context of the film.” “There were shots that took weeks to bring the rotos scope, composition and static images to life,” he says. Hauser used “one for generation, one for upscaling, and the other for moving and converting images.” This is a “patchwork process” that follows the film’s low FI, mashup nature.
AI is developing dramatically – if he starts “Princess Mumbie” today, Hauser estimates he will close out the post-production in half the time – and the director is vigilant and optimistic about where it is heading. Despite the flashy prosperity that technology offers, Hauser believes that filmmaking has a human element and that machines cannot be replicated. AI may one day soon “make the most beautiful and most perfect art,” but he says, it can only be extrapolated from thousands of films already made. “The message of the film is that emotional nuances are more important than formulas.”
The director admits he is “fearing” AI, but he also admits that he “recognizes its potential” by allowing filmmakers to take more “creative risks” and democratizes the tools of filmmaking in Africa and beyond, and by democratizing the tools of Maumee manufacturing, which are only a handful of privileged hands.
“Up until now, it’s Hollywood, which always tells the story of the whole world,” Hauser says. “And through this technology… (African filmmakers) can tell more of their stories. Not just Africa, but they get more different perspectives and different kinds of storytelling.”
