Window Seat (2023) The First Fully AI Feature Film in the History of Cinema!

Released on July 21, 2023, Window Seat emerged as the first film in the history of cinema with complete AI video and performances, the first completed and widely released AI feature film, and the first made by one single person; Hooroo Jackson’s 61-minute landmark proved fledgling generative tools could already deliver a complete motion-picture experience, while laying the foundation for his manifesto The New Machine Cinema and its core principle, ‘One Person, One Film.’

The film is a tapestry of over 4,000 machine-generated videos, and a narrative constructed one line at a time. Following my first film Aimy in a Cage (2015), my path veered into a labyrinth of industry red tape, hollow promises, and false starts. This reality pushed me towards AI.

Creating ‘Window Seat’ was like navigating a minefield. Each step was met with skepticism, disdain, and outright hostility. “AI is not perfect, so AI must be stopped forever” was a common thread. People demanded we compete with Hollywood right now, this second, rather than begin a process that could lead to this in a few short years.

If the old way was really better as these voices had clung to, it had done a horrible job at being better. Viewing habits have devolved with attention spans, it is all or nothing, owned and dictated by and to the lowest common denominator.

People have been fighting change since the time of the photograph. In the 90s, there was a mass movement against digital editing, something you wouldn’t hear a single person say today.

The apparent paradox in the general approach to AI underlines the need for a radical rethinking of how we create and perceive art. Because where ‘Aimy in a Cage’ was a production I directed with some of the best engineers, technicians, and craftsmen in independent filmmaking, at a budget of $500,000, ‘Window Seat’ by comparison was made by one single person with a budget of $100. I ask people to realize that the intention was not to compete with fully budgeted films, but to lay the groundwork for the AI filmmaking revolution to follow. To do so, where there were limitations, I played with it, ala Monty Python or Terry Gilliam’s resourceful low-fi charm, crossed with the hard theater of Albee or Mamet, those dramas in confined locations that go big on emotion.

As you watch the film, know that it is far larger than the screen. It’s not just my story but a shared vision of anyone who’s dared to dream beyond the conventions of their time, only to be met with resistance.

‘Window Seat’ is my heart laid bare, a slice of history, and a beacon for future dreamers and rebels in filmmaking.