Francine Was a Machine (excerpt)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

The film´s starting point is the story about René Descartes’ mechanical daughter, a fable about a man of rationality and science creating a human-looking machine in the place of his dead daughter Francine. During a travel through a storm at sea, the seamen discovered the doll in Descartes’ cabin and horrified threw it into the ocean.

The film intertwines this story with images from a workshop producing sex dolls with artificial intelligence. Body parts and electronics, flesh colored silicon and casting molds are inhabiting this place. The film also shows images of cephalopods from the bottom of the sea, speculating on where Descarte´s doll ended her mechanical life and what became of her when she escaped the rational dualist world view of her creator.