Love Machina

Meet Martine and Bina Rothblatt, a fearless, ferociously futuristic, and furiously in love couple. Director Peter Sillen captures their existential quest to immortalize their love by digitizing Bina’s consciousness in an AI humanoid named Bina48. This cause that at first seems impossibly lofty is revealed to be urgent, emergent, and very real. As Bina and Martine’s incredible contributions to technology and art are revisited and explored, it is impossible not to admire their minds as much as their enormous hearts. 

Their philosophy and approach, captured with inquisitiveness and tenderness, provides a much needed salve in the conversation around the future of AI, a way forward guided by pure, cosmic love. An expansive story of how queerness unlocks new dimensions of thinking and how trans experience is intrinsically linked with boundless creativity, Martine, Bina, and Bina48 reveal themselves to be exactly the types of thought leaders that humanity needs right now and far, far into the future. —Ash Hoyle

California Premiere

Peter Sillen is a New York-based documentary filmmaker directing portraits of an array of individuals living and working outside stereotypical 9-to-5 situations. His film for SNY on the 1969 Jets, Mets and Knicks championships won an Emmy and his ESPN 30 for 30 Unhittable: Sidd Finch and the Tibetan Fastball based on a beloved George Plimpton article was nominated for an Emmy award. Benjamin Smoke, a collaboration with fellow filmmaker Jem Cohen, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an IFP Independent Spirit award as well as a Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association. Sillen’s work has premiered at prestigious festivals around the world including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, etc. He teamed up with Kelly Reichardt in 2006 as cinematographer on Old Joy which Manohla Dargis named one of the 10 best American films of the year.