One Second is Too Much (Ongoing)
An ongoing chronicle defending the historical record of cinema’s first AI feature films against institutionalists, moderators, and gatekeepers; Window Seat (2023) and DreadClub (2024), the first fully AI feature film and first fully AI animated feature films in the history of cinema.
It is an unfortunate this article has to exist. Institutional failure is something I hope AI can completely rewrite going forward to save us from the sheer willfulness of these low level controllers who operate with disproportionate control over the public record. I have come to see a desperate era can only produce a society of Javerts, following rules they don’t even understand with a sense of religious fervor because they are desperate for a purpose.
They operate from a position of assumed authority what I call “a heavenly mandate over the arts.” They genuinely believe their institutional positions give them the right to decide what counts as legitimate art and who gets to be in the historical record. It’s not unconscious bias or lack of awareness. It’s conscious gatekeeping by people who see themselves as the rightful arbiters of culture, defending their territory against outsiders who achieved something without going through proper channels. The cruelty isn’t a bug, but a feature designed to maintain their control over who gets to matter in history.
First, I have found that friends, colleagues, and friendly voices in the collective have been coming out on their own protecting the record, which I am very thankful, and it is my hope it continues to be self-perpetuating. These are a few of many, mind you:
So… I hope I never have to update this article at all, and I hope this original message is all that is ever posted here; it will be updated whenever my films are in dispute.
Wikipedia – Window Seat
Window Seat’s inclusion on Wikipedia was immediately blocked by one of its moderators who ignored Wikipedia’s notability guidelines.
But the editor misapplies WP:NFILM guidelines. While that policy requires two national critic reviews, it is one of several possible paths to establish notability. Window Seat’s historical significance as the first fully AI feature film in the history of cinema, represents not just an alternative path to notability under WP:GNG (General Notability Guidelines), but the birth of a new artform, the greatest example of the notability guideline this moderator will ever personally oversee.
Of course this, again, requires one second of research, but I have found, one second is too much. Further, there are other things, like the editor misapplying the interview and blu-ray release attribute which are supplemental sources about methodology and release, extremely common on Wikipedia because you don’t need an academic to tell you the sky is blue, you just need to look out the window–he is rejecting the article as if those supplemental sources are the driving sources of the article proving its existence.
One thing he did was denigrate ReviewRon as an unreliable source; a global critic for the Times of India and BBC India Correspondent. Of course he did not do one second of research on Ronak either, one second is too much.
Window Seat’s inclusion into Wikipedia as it stands this second, represents the aggregate, the notability of being the first fully AI feature film in the history of cinema, plus the national critic review, plus the supplemental materials.
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February 19 update:
There is now a Russian film spamming messages online (I counted 25 messages total) stating that their movie, “Belovezhskaya Pushcha” from Arteki Studios is actually the first AI feature film.
The problem? They screened in 2025, a full seventeen months after “Window Seat”, and six months after “DreadClub”. According to these time travelers, 2025 comes before 2023. Their press release:
Translation:
AI writing is more dicey, but I roll my eyes at the ‘we’re a proud human written script’ nonsense; an AI augmented screenplay by a good writer will trounce a human written script by a bad writer one hundred percent of the time, and a fully AI written script is not, at this point, viable. You just have to look at the last fifteen years of cinema for these human written scripts. The benefit of writing with LLMs is it will think through every detail with you. It will be better. So coming out saying, we’re proud our writing is not as thorough and thought-through as those workshopped with AI is not the ringing endorsement they believe. As it stands, LLMs are like having an editor by your side from a major publishing house, something only previously available to the elite writing ruling class.
Meanwhile my films are not partially AI. They aren’t hybrid AI with teams. Everything you see and hear on screen is orchestrated through machine algorithms. Every bit of scripting was processed through LLMs. My only goal was to fulfill the most central tenet for machine filmmaking: One Man, One Film. It is why my films still carry the milestone from July ’23 and July ’24, when Arteki Studios didn’t even exist, and in all likelihood were joining the hate mob against AI until the Pivot. Another day, another nightmare. But DreadClub made Wikipedia:
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June 18th:
The names Autumn and Katy are repeated in practically every single scene in A Very Long Carriage Ride, and this reviewer still couldn’t get such a fundamental detail correct. Did he even watch the film? Was his entire review crafted defensively against perceived anti-AI opponents he decided to cater toward instead of hold respect toward a filmmaker’s signature work?
June 20th update:
And now the nth “first AI animated feature film” has been announced, this one from China.
June 25:
Another “first AI feature film in history” has now dropped.
