Whose Film is This? Authorship and the Birth of AI Cinema in Argentina.

This article explores the emergence of AI-generated cinema in Argentina and its impact on the author's status. Argentine independent filmmakers and video content creators are increasingly using AI tools to make short works and converging toward a feature-length film. But they fear losing control ove...

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Published in:Hispanic Review Vol. 94; no. 3; pp. 393 - 418
Main Author: Ledesma, Eduardo
Format: Article
Published: University of Pennsylvania Press Summer2026
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Whose Film is This? Authorship and the Birth of AI Cinema in Argentina.
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        au: Ledesma, Eduardo
        affil: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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        Authorship
        Artificial intelligence
        Motion picture theaters
        Aesthetics
        Prompt engineering
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          Authorship
          Artificial intelligence
          Motion picture theaters
          Aesthetics
          Prompt engineering
      keyword:
        AI Cinema
        AI Montage
        AI Slop
        Argentina
        Auteur
        Disruptive Technology
        Distant Viewing
        Eduardo Ledesma
        Generative Cinema
        Glitch
        Hallucination
        Human-Computer Interaction
        Prompt Engineering
        Scriptor
      ab: This article explores the emergence of AI-generated cinema in Argentina and its impact on the author's status. Argentine independent filmmakers and video content creators are increasingly using AI tools to make short works and converging toward a feature-length film. But they fear losing control over their work and are concerned about the inevitable displacement of human labor. These anxieties are thematized in the films. I focus on three sci-fi shorts—Macchia's Robort , Aguilar's Sueño finlandés y paranoico , and Aloi's El abismo —to examine how AI unsettles notions of authorship even as it facilitates collaborative forms of human–AI cinema. Pushing aesthetic boundaries, these films exploit AI's instability—glitches and hallucinations—as aesthetic strategies. Working within broader debates, I argue that authorship is not vanishing but being radically reshaped, for better and worse. AI's long-term effects on the audiovisual arena remain uncertain, but critics must engage with these hybrid audiovisual forms. I explore the emergence of AI‑generated cinema in Argentina and its impact on the author's status. Argentine independent filmmakers and video content creators are increasingly turning to AI tools to make short works and converging toward a feature-length film. But they fear losing control over their work and are concerned by the inevitable displacement of human labor. I focus on three sci‑fi shorts—Sebastián Macchia's Robort , Jimena Aguilar's Sueño finlandés y paranoico , and Andrés Aloi's El abismo —to examine how AI unsettles notions of authorship even as it facilitates collaborative forms of human–AI cinema. Pushing aesthetic boundaries, these films exploit AI's instability—glitches and hallucinations—as aesthetic strategies. Placing Argentine AI cinema within broader debates, I argue that authorship is not vanishing but being radically reshaped, for better and worse. AI's long‑term effects on the audiovisual arena remain uncertain, but critics must engage with these hybrid audiovisual forms.
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      src: R
    language: English
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