Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Learning how to do a backflip can be a difficult, risky endeavour. That’s why, after many failed attempts and a stubbed toe, Nikita Diakur, a filmmaker based in Germany, opted for an unconventional method – machine learning. To achieve the feat, Diakur created a digital avatar of himself and, with code and inspiration pulled from a research paper titled ‘DeepMimic’, programmed it to train on YouTube tutorial videos until it could land a backflip successfully. The resulting short is a wildly original and amusing snapshot of both the potential and current limits of AI. And underneath its wry slapstick humour, Backflip is a thoughtful exploration of fear – not just of the unpredictable future of machine learning, but also the physical world we inhabit, where the results of jumping from your feet and landing on your head can’t be shaken off quite so easily.
Director: Nikita Diakur
Producers: Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron
video
Stories and literature
Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone
5 minutes
video
Sex and sexuality
After a sextortion scam, Eugene conducts an unblushing survey of masturbation
14 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
video
Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
4 minutes
video
Subcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
5 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A deepfake porn victim confronts the pain of having her likeness stolen and vandalised
19 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
11 minutes
video
Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
video
Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes