RMIT Cinema Studies and ‹SCREEN INQUISITION› are proud to present the Australian premiere of Reality Frictions, followed by a discussion and Q&A with director Steve F. Anderson about the film, cinematic reality in the age of generative A.I., and the power of long-form videographic film criticism.

Reality Frictions explores the intersection of fact and fiction on the screens of Hollywood, highlighting moments when images, people or events from the real world intrude on the cinematic one. Richly illustrated with clips from more than 100 movies and TV shows, Reality Frictions is an entertaining, but also serious, investigation of media's role in revealing truth and making history set against the historical backdrop of the current fascination with machine learning and generative AI. In an age defined by anxieties about our ability to tell real from fake, Reality Frictions demonstrates that spectators have long traversed the boundaries of believability, developing nuanced skills for navigating the pleasures and paradoxes that emerge when reality and fiction collide.

Steve F. Anderson is a filmmaker, media artist and writer working at the intersection of media, history and technology. A former documentary editor for National Geographic and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Steve founded the public media archive Critical Commons in 2008. He has written or edited books on media historiography, technologies of vision and popular documentary. An award-winning media artist, his work has been exhibited in the US and abroad and his video essays have appeared in InTransition, American Literature, Visible Language, and Iluminace. He received an MFA in Film and Video from CalArts and a PhD in Film, Literature and Culture from USC. He currently teaches documentary and digital media arts in the Film School at UCLA. His most recent feature documentary Reality Frictions premiered at the Madrid International Film Festival in 2024.