Anatola Araba
Anatola is a writer, filmmaker, and futurist from New York City. Her creations have been showcased in film festivals, museums, and art galleries across the globe. She’s had various artworks displayed at the MoMA, Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Her filmmaking has been recognized by AT&T’s Film Awards for New Forms of Storytelling, Social Impact Media Awards, the Unity for Humanity Summit, and more. She graduated in 2021 from NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Film and Television Production with a double minor in Social Entrepreneurship and Interactive Media Arts. With the mantra that “creativity is the greatest tool of humanity,” Anatola’s passion is to use emerging technologies to diversify the pool of circulating personal and cultural narratives. Her goal is to innovate, inspire, and reimagine the world as it could be. Visit her website at anatolaaraba.com.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
Commonly referred to as the lovechild between Black Panther and I, Robot, Afro Algorithms is a short film that explores Afrocentric visions for the future while advocating for a new standard of leadership, the importance of diverse perspectives, how creativity is our greatest superpower, and much more.
While in my senior year at NYU Tisch and in the midst of a global pandemic, I went into a deep dive researching the pros, cons, and controversies of artificial intelligence. I sourced inspiration from books such as Race After Technology by Ruja Benjamin, Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble, Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Brussard, the documentary Coded Bias directed by Shalini Kantayya, and more. I distilled the insights from these studies into Afro Algorithms, with the aim of creating a work of science fiction that at once entertains, enlightens, inspires, and educates.
Whether human beings or machines, we can all learn something from Afro Algorithms. After all, I created this story with the intention of sparking important conversations about race, technology, and where humanity is driving the future of this planet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Afro Algorithms was made possible in part due to Mozilla’s Creative Media Awards, which are supported by the NetGain Partnership, a collaboration between Mozilla, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation. Afro Algorithms was also made possible in part due to The Black Realities Grant, a transmedia arts organization for Black creatives, and Artizen, a community fund for artist grants.