In class we watched a short film about artificial intelligence, called ‘Kara’. The film explored similar concepts to many other films that have been made about robots before, such as whether robots can really feel human emotions. The film begins with a robot, named Kara, being assembled, whilst an operator asks the robot questions, testing for the quality of the product. As the film progresses we gradually see the robot, who resembles a very realistic depiction of a girl, becoming increasingly aware of her environment. As the production nears completion, Kara continues to ask questions regarding what her life is going to be like outside of the factory. To her shock and disappointment, the operator effectively tells her she is going to be a slave for someone else throughout her life. Kara begins to express clear distress regarding why she has to be a slave, which then prompts the operator to make Kara defective and preceded to terminate her. However, as Kara’s scream’s for her ‘life’ to be held onto, the operator stops the dissembling of her body, putting her back together so that she can keep the ‘life’ she believes she deserves.

The film, although nothing I haven’t really been exposed to before, was really interesting due to the amount of emotion that was conveyed through the animation. The animation is pretty incredible, not necessarily in terms of graphics, but in it’s ability to illustrate human characteristics so effectively through the robot (Kara). The film reminded me very clearly of a recent film called ‘Ex Machina’, that explores very similar concepts to what is shown in the short film, just with the added depth of a feature length. What struck me, was the uncanny similarities between ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Kara’, both from the aesthetics of the robot, to the themes of wanting to escape, even down to how the robot is assembled as well as the arrogant and comedic like personality of the operator in the short film, that can clearly be juxtaposed to the main inventor in ‘Ex Machina’, Nathan Bateman. Even the name of the robots are similar to some extent, ‘Kara’ and ‘Ava’, both sound comparable. Despite ‘Ex Machina’ being a good film that was enjoyable to watch, some of that joy that I got from the film is almost diminished by the major similarities that it seems to draw from the film ‘Kara’. Perhaps ‘Ex Machina’ was made in conjunction with the creators of ‘Kara’, but it does seem a bit strange. Nonetheless, both films where well created, it would just be interesting to find out more about the influences that went into making ‘Ex Machina’ and whether there actually was some direct things taken from the short film ‘Kara’