<aside> 📍
You are not lost, you are here.
You have arrived at a sub page in the AIxDESIGN Archive.
This page is part of the AI Greenhouse project by AIxDESIGN & NFA (Netherlands Film Academy).
</aside>
<aside>
INDEX
</aside>
<aside> 🧩
Still to add (delete this box when done)
Amsterdam, October 8-9, 2026
Every director works somewhere between control and chance. And we each carry memories we have no photo of.
AI Greenhouse, a two-year research collaboration between the Netherlands Film Academy and AIxDESIGN, invited filmmakers, media practitioners, and creative communities to two connected events exploring critical and experimental approaches to AI in filmmaking practice.
For this fourth edition, we welcomed filmmaker Herinarivo Rakotomanana for a public lecture and a full-day workshop at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam.
Artist Lecture: Directing the Unpredictable
Workshop: Bring Your Own Memory
| Artist Lecture | Workshop | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Thursday, October 8 · 19:00 to 21:30 | Friday, October 9 · full day |
| Where | Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam | Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam (Room 4.14) |
| Who came | 47 RSVPs went | 15 RSVPs went, around 30 seats |
| Luma | Directing the Unpredictable | Bring Your Own Memory |
Evening Lecture: Directing the Unpredictable
Every director works somewhere between control and chance. Herinarivo Rakotomanana works there on purpose. Coming to AI filmmaking from analog street photography and music-video directing, his practice treats the generative model as something you can only partly steer, and asks what happens to the directorial gesture when the frame you plan and the frame the machine returns are rarely the same.
His lecture traced that question across his own films. With More Tears Than Harm, a painterly animation built from personal memories, he showed how he establishes a "visual DNA" to hold aesthetic consistency and control staging. With the photorealistic Mirage Deux Mille, he broke down his "Run and Go" method of virtual scouting, where accidental details expand a scene and let the story find its own way. Running underneath was a lineage of improvisation, from moving a real camera around a dancer in his early film Lazy Bird to a practical multi-tool workflow drawn from two short commercial projects, Mora Mora and Inko.
Full-Day Workshop: Bring Your Own Memory
We each carry memories we have no photo of. This full-day workshop was about those, and the role of AI in mediating our individual and collective memories. Participants began from a single memory fragment (a voice note, a photo, an object, a place, or something that only ever existed in their head) and translated it into a short film of roughly 30 to 45 seconds using AI video tools. The day opened with a guided visualization rather than a tool, then everyone chose between a hyper-realistic reconstruction and an abstract, atmospheric interpretation. Most of the work happened in Flora, a node-based canvas for image and video generation, with shared logins for the other tools.
Led by Herinarivo Rakotomanana, with Nadia Piet and Pablo Núñez Palma (AI Greenhouse).
About Herinarivo Rakotomanana
Herinarivo Rakotomanana's practice unfolds between introspective fiction films and music videos with independent artists. Since the early days of GANs, he has been exploring the latent space of AI-generated imagery, weaving sensorial cinema and visual experimentation, from photorealistic film to animation. Awarded across international film and generative media festivals, including Best Technical Achievement at BIFAN 2025 for his AI-animated More Tears Than Harm, his work bridges technological experimentation with personal storytelling, focusing on intimate themes and memories. He is currently in development on his debut feature film.
Learn more on his website or YouTube.
EVENT LINKS
Directing the Unpredictable by Herinarivo Rakotomanana
Directing the Unpredictable by Herinarivo Rakotomanana