In Marc Isaacs’ latest film, the subversive documentary maker reveals that an AI research laboratory recently licensed his entire body of work. That’s a quarter-century of droll, deadpan studies of ordinary life in Britain – from the poetic Lift, about the comings and goings in a London tower block, and The Curious World of Frinton-on-Sea, set in the sleepy retirement town dubbed “God’s waiting room”, to Philip and His Seven Wives, in which a secondhand furniture dealer declares himself to be a Hebrew king. Isaacs agreed to let data analysts at the University of Southern England feed these and other documentaries into their system to harvest authentic human emotions from which AI characters could then be created. His film about the experience takes its name from the university’s lab: Synthetic Sincerity.
But how synthetic is the film itself? “Well, we made up the University of Southern England,” admits Isaacs, 59, over lunch at Etles, a Uyghur restaurant near his home in London. The choice of venue is no accident: its chef and owner, Ablikim Rahman, who flutters around us today bearing bowls of thick, glossy leghmen noodles, appears in Synthetic Sincerity being photographed by the AI boffins and turned into an avatar. This is Rahman’s first film, though he hasn’t seen it yet: “Soon,” he says with a sheepish smile.
