Mechanical Love

(Denmark, 2007, 79 mins)

35mm

Directed By: Phie Ambo

Writer: Phie Ambo
Producer: Sigrid Helene Dyekjær
Executive Producer: Tju-Bang Film
Cinematographer: Phie Ambo
Editors: Camilla Skousen, My Thordal
Music: Rasmus Winther Jense, Sanna Salmenkallio
Featuring: Hiroshi Ishiguro, Takanori Shibata, Frau Körner

Can emotions be transmitted through circuitry? Is love given to a machine still love? These questions are at the core of Phie Ambo's fascinating look at the developing field of therapeutic robotics. With warmth and easy humor, Ambo introduces us to people who are already bridging the divide between the mechanical and the emotional.

In Japan, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's quest to create a robot with sonzai-kan, roughly translated as “human presence,” has led him to create robotic doppelgangers of his entire family. Halfway around the world, Frau Körner, an elderly woman in a German nursing home, has developed an emotional attachment to Paro, an experimental mechanical baby seal. Even as her caregivers debate the ethics of emotional surrogates, Körner harbors no illusions about her newfound friend. “It doesn't have to be real,” she explains. “This is much better.” In this unsettling and enthralling look toward the future of the human heart, that simple statement speaks volumes.

-- Doug Jones

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