The New Machine Cinema: Foundations in AI Film Theory
Foundations in AI Film Theory
THE NEW MACHINE CINEMA
The first comprehensive theoretical framework for artificial intelligence in filmmaking. Available in two editions.
FOUNDATIONS EDITION The New Machine Cinema: Foundational Essays in AI Film Theory Published December 25, 2024
The written volume collecting seven seminal essays that establish AI film theory as a discipline. As creator of the first fully AI-generated feature film (Window Seat, 2023) and the first AI animated feature film (DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict, 2024), director Hooroo Jackson bridges the role of practitioner and theorist, articulating a comprehensive framework for understanding this revolutionary new medium.
Essays:
“The New Machine Cinema” “AI Films Are Films” “One Man, One Film” “Speed of the Mind” “The Living, Breathing Cinema” “The Moral Argument” “The Automated Film”
In “One Man, One Film,” Jackson positions machine filmmaking as the ultimate expression of Bazin’s auteur theory. “Speed of the Mind” examines how AI enables a new form of rapid cinema approaching the pace of human thought. “The Living, Breathing Cinema” introduces the concept of malleable cinema and the infinite film. “The Automated Film” confronts the furthest implications of removing human authorship entirely, identifying it as the direct villain to the auteur theory.
The first serious theoretical examination of AI’s impact on cinematic art, comparable to how Eisenstein developed montage theory or Bazin analyzed the French New Wave. Jackson’s dual role as director and theorist places him alongside historic auteurs who operated simultaneously as film theorists, from Dziga Vertov’s kino-eye to Maya Deren’s writings on art and film, to the Dogme 95 manifesto.
Available everywhere online.
AUDIOVISUAL EDITION The New Machine Cinema Published December 18, 2025 74 minutes
The documentary edition translates Jackson’s foundational essays into cinema itself. Set to AI-generated visuals and music, with the essays performed by machine actors, the Audiovisual Edition is a 74-minute film that makes the theoretical framework a direct experience rather than a reading exercise.
Born from Jackson’s intensive period of avant-garde experimentation across 2025, where hundreds of AI vignettes sharpened a new visual language, the Audiovisual Edition represents the culmination of that work — theory expressed through the very medium it describes.
Where the Foundations Edition is the text, the Audiovisual Edition is the sermon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hooroo Jackson is an American film director, screenwriter, editor, and film theorist responsible for multiple firsts in cinema history, including the first fully AI feature film (Window Seat, 2023), the first fully AI animated feature film (DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict, 2024), and the first film released in two different artistic styles simultaneously (A Very Long Carriage Ride, 2025). He introduced the term “The New Machine Cinema” and is the author of two volumes of AI film theory.
Date:
March 1, 2026
