Another Body takes a chilling look at deepfake technology, at the Cinematheque November 15

Following one engineering student’s experience, the documentary takes a close look at the personal fallout from the growing form of online harrassment

By Janet Smith

Another Body screens at the Cinematheque on November 15 at 7 pm, with a post-screening discussion with Dr. Jason Winters, Dr. Carolin Klein, Honourable Niki Sharma, Attorney General of British Columbia, and (via Zoom) Another Body co-director Reuben Hamlyn

HERE’S AN ETHICAL conundrum: how do you make a documentary about someone whose life has been turned upside down by deepfake technology—to be specific, whose face has been digitally pasted to the bodies of numerous porn stars? If you film and identify the person, you risk making their situation worse.

In the case of the fascinating and chilling new documentary Another Body, seeing its world premiere at the Cinematheque, the answer is simple: you use that same technology to protect the person’s identity. That allows filmmakers Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn to capture the personal side of a fast-growing corner of the internet.

“Taylor Klein” is an engineering student who takes matters into her own hands when police find themselves unable to protect her from an anonymous bully who’s been attaching her face, and all her identifying details (her school, her hometown) on Pornhub and elsewhere. Working with a friend who’s also been victimized, she begins her own investigation into who from their past could be terrorizing them from the shadows. And what she finds, sadly, is a vast, creepy underground culture of misogynists who share how-tos on deepfake technology—and even take on paid commissions from others. As you might expect, the women’s presence in a male-dominated field plays into the mystery.

The film makes it clear the law has much catching-up to do with a weapon of pornography that’s already wreaking havoc; it seems that, legally, the system only cares whether it’s your body in the video or not.

The film offers a compelling mix of intimate video diaries, digitally-generated re-enactments, and expert interviews. In the end what stays with you, though, is the courage of the women who take on the internet here—and the fact that they find strength in numbers fighting what seems, at first anyway, to be an untraceable assailant.  

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