AI cannot make cinema, director Linklater says

Can great art be made without human genius and all its flaws? It's a vital question at a time when artificial intelligence threatens to subsume Hollywood.

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Through new movies “Nouvelle Vague” and “Blue Moon,” director Richard Linklater offers an answer - delving into the lives of two brilliant, volatile men whose films and plays shaped French New Wave cinema and Broadway.

His conclusion? “AI is not going to make a film,” the US indie auteur says. “Storytelling, narrative, characters? Something that connects to humanity? That’s a whole ‘nother thing,” says the Texan whose notable films include “Boyhood,” the “Before” trilogy, “School of Rock” and “Hit Man.”

Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” streaming on Netflix from November 14, charts how young French director Jean-Luc Godard defied all filmmaking convention to create his 1960 classic “Breathless.” It captures the swagger, charisma and impulsiveness with which Godard convinced financial backers and Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg to make a debut feature that had neither a script nor a workable filming schedule.

“He’s a little full of shit, but he’s a genius. A revolution is going on, but he’s the only one who knows it,” Linklater says of Godard, an icon of cinema’s French New Wave movement in the late 1950s and 60s.