For the 16th time, the Arts Arena presents UNAFF and its Traveling Film Festival (TFF) with a curated series of documentary films. Founded in 1998, by longtime Stanford University educator and film critic Jasmina Bojic, UNAFF has screened documentaries dealing with human rights, the environment, women’s issues, children, refugee protection, homelessness, racism, disease control, universal education, war and peace. Many selections have gone on to win Oscars and other major awards. For more details please visit www.unaff.org.
Selected film will be screened in the evening of Tuesday May 9 in the presence of UNAFF Founder and Executive Director Jasmina Bojic.
CODED BIAS
(86 min) US
Director/Producer: Shalini Kantayya
Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that many facial recognition technologies do not accurately detect darker-skinned faces or classify the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, artificial intelligence is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.
Shalini Kantayya’s documentary Coded Bias premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the National Geographic television series, Breakthrough, which was executive produced by Ron Howard and broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut, Catching the Sun, premiered at the LA Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with executive producer Leonardo Di Caprio and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary. Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fullbright Scholar, and an Associate of the UC Berkley Graduate School of Journalism
Pictured: Screen shot from CODED BIAS. Courtesy of UNAFF