Film: "Computer Chess"

The Sundance Film Festival in the US ended this week, but there is one "oddball" film that's continuing to attract attention and is currently doing the rounds of reviews. It is the film by Andrew Bujalski, "Computer Chess". Instead of highlighting the usual review from some film buff, I thought it more interesting to point to this instead - an article by Gordon Kindlmann, assistant professor of comp sci. at the University of Chicago, and who worked on the movie as a technical consultant and actually acted in it.

There were also philosophical questions in the air, such as whether a program was capable of creative or insightful play, and to what extent we could learn from the computer when it played a strong game. Brilliant and passionate people, with intellectual goals as well as complex emotional investments, populated all sides of these issues. Bujalski's characters live in this moment, working through the ideas and ambitions of that optimistic and fertile time.

By the way, here is Bujalski's fund raising page for the movie.