AI and Faith: Student’s Film Premieres at SBIFF

Ashley Clark ’26, selected to participate in the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s (SBIFF) competitive five-month filmmaking and mentoring program, won the 10-10-10 award for the College Screenwriting competition. The English and theater arts double major from Henderson, Nevada, wrote a 10-minute screenplay, “Deus Ex Machina,” and the festival paired her with UC Santa Barbara international student Can Basoglu, who directed the short fi lm. It premiered on Valentine’s Day at the Arlington Theatre.

“What a dream,” she says. “I truly attribute it to the countless creatives in my life, from my professors to my collaborators — such talented and resilient fi lmmakers — and folks at SBIFF committed to education and expanding student access to film.”

In the script, a group of nuns discover that one of their sisters has been hiding an orphaned, artifi cially intelligent humanoid child in their church, and they struggle about what to do. “They wrestle with AI and its relationship to religion in a variety of ways, from debating whether discipline or forgiveness is more Christlike in their situation to contemplating automaton theory and what it means to be alive,” Ashley says.

Deus ex machina, a plot device from Greek theater, means “God in the machine.” “The fi lm’s title refers to the characters wrestling with finding Christ and Christlike behavior in an unimaginable moral and political dilemma,” she says.

Ashley praises the cast and Basoglu for their dedication and kindness during the challenging process of fi lmmaking. “Can has shown nothing but the utmost respect and enthusiasm for the script and the questions it asks,” she says. “He gathered a solid cast and crew who treated the story with the same sincerity.”

Editor-in-chief of the Phoenix, Westmont’s literary magazine, Ashley has also worked on the Citadel yearbook as a copywriter. She served as production manager for the Fringe Festival last year and as dramaturg for “Antigonick” in the fall, also overseeing lighting. She has also done hair and makeup and costume design. “Westmont theater has trained me to be a well-rounded artist,” she says.

Ashley hopes to pursue an MFA in playwriting or creative writing to prepare for a career as a professional writer.