Monday, May 11 • Renoir Floridablanca 
Over the course of an intensive day, Camilo Restrepo and Jorge Caballero led a workshop exploring the potential crossroads between documentary archives and AI. Bringing together Restrepo’s expertise in 16mm and analogue textures with Caballero’s mastery of AI in film, the session proposed a rare dialogue: uniting the materiality of classic cinema with the strength of modern generative tools.
The starting point was clear: the machine shouldn’t do the work for you; instead, you must guide it with a clear authorial vision. We worked on applying documentary rigour, ethics, and aesthetic judgement to AI, treating these tools as an extension of the creative mind, not a replacement.
To put theory into practice, we deconstructed the short film 09/05/1982, analysing the step-by-step creation of its synthetic archive. This case study allowed us to see the specific decisions and criteria behind a documentary built through AI.
Ultimately, this was more than a technical session—it was a space for reflection on the responsibility of using such tools. This day is just one step in our ongoing work at the lab.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture.
