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The Archivist

The Archivist is an experimental generative short film exploring memory, time, and the roles we inhabit. The story begins in an absurd way — with Ted, a restless traveler, stepping on a squeaky plastic duck in the streets of New York. That trivial moment unravels his reality: inside his loft, the walls flicker into different eras, transforming the space into medieval chambers, Renaissance courts, Victorian salons, smoky nightclubs, and futuristic rooms. Visitors from each time appear, leaving behind objects — fragments of memory that accumulate like an impossible archive.
As the chaos builds, Ted realizes that the objects are not what they seem, and memory itself begins to collapse. His journey leads him to the Archivist, the enigmatic keeper of what survives, who forces him to confront a simple truth: memory is not what we keep, but what we release.

  • Jacek Kadaj
    Director
  • Jacek Kadaj
    Writer
  • Jacek Kadaj
    Producer
  • Jacek Kadaj
    Cinematographer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Experimental, Surreal, Conceptual, Generative Short, Philosophical, Psychological, Arthouse
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 37 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    August 30, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Poland
  • Country of Filming:
    Poland
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, Ai
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.21:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • International Gold Awards
    New York
    United States
    October 5, 2025
    Award Winner: Super Short Film
  • Milan Gold Awards
    Milan
    Italy
    October 5, 2025
    Award Winner: Best Experimental Film
  • London Movie Awards
    London
    United Kingdom
    October 5, 2025
    Awar Winner: Best Super Short Film
  • New York Movie Awards
    Nwe Yourk
    United States
    October 5, 2025
    Award Winner: Super Short Film
  • Indian Independent Film Festival
    Kolkata
    India
    September 15, 2025
    Award Winner: Best Experimental Film
  • Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival
    Athens
    Greece
    February 20, 2026
    Honorable Mention (BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM)
  • National Independent Film Association - NIFA Awards
    Appleton, WI
    United States
    October 4, 2025
    Finalist (NIFA Best Micro-Budget Film)
Distribution Information
  • A1Gen01 Labs
    Distributor
    Country: Poland
    Rights: All Rights, Internet, Video on Demand, Pay Per View, Hotel, Airline, Ship, Theatrical, Video / Disc, Free TV, Paid TV, Console / Handheld Device
Director Biography - Jacek Kadaj

Jacek Kadaj is a cinematographer, photographer, and new media artist with over 30 years of experience in traditional filmmaking. A graduate in Cinematography from the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice, Poland, his award-winning work has been exhibited internationally, published by National Geographic and Getty Images, and commissioned by global brands such as Nike, Microsoft, and Samsung. In recent years, he has been exploring the creative potential of generative AI, blending cutting-edge technology with an auteur’s sensitivity to craft intimate, emotionally resonant visual stories.

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Director Statement

The Archivist was born out of my fascination with memory — not as a static record, but as something fragile, theatrical, and constantly rewritten. I wanted to create a film where history is not presented as linear, but as a flicker of overlapping eras, collapsing into each other inside a single space.

The choice of a squeaky plastic duck as the catalyst was deliberate: absurd, playful, and almost embarrassing in its simplicity. It felt important to ground this surreal journey in something so ordinary that it becomes uncanny. For me, the duck embodies the randomness of memory — how trivial moments, accidents, or objects can trigger entire worlds of meaning.

Working with generative tools was also essential to this process. These technologies are unstable, unpredictable, and still in their infancy, much like the way memory itself functions. I didn’t want to use AI just for spectacle, but as a way to explore how cinema can fragment, distort, and reconstruct the way we remember.

At its core, The Archivist is a meditation on time, identity, and the roles we carry, knowingly or not. I wanted the film to feel a little like theater — heightened, performative, and strange — because life itself often feels that way. We play our parts, hold onto our props, and then pass them on. What remains is not what we keep, but what we choose to release.