About
David Levine Bramante
CinemaMachina is David’s filmmaking practice: a place for original passion projects and carefully chosen collaborations. He writes, directs, and produces short films, and is available to take those roles on selected projects for others.
Before the camera
Art came first.
David grew up in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, with drawing, painting, and sculpture woven through his childhood. At Serrania Elementary School in Woodland Hills, he earned the PACE Art Award. As a kid, he studied life drawing from nude models at the Armory in Pasadena and oil painting with Betty Collins in the NoHo Arts District.
At Palisades High School, he spent two years in AP Art. He went on to study fine art at Otis College of Art and Design in Section L, and helped Keith Sklar with an Otis summer program. In the 2000s, he painted live for charity in Downtown Los Angeles. In 2012, he served on the board of directors of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles arts organization.
He also studied journalism at Santa Monica College, moving from political cartoonist to reporter to editor in chief of The Corsair.
2020–2022 / The questions
Before the images, the conversations.
During the pandemic, David hosted The David Bramante Show, interviewing researchers and thinkers about consciousness, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and the relationship between humans and machines. The series began in 2020 and continued into 2022.
Those conversations led him deeper into AI research. By early 2022, he was testing emerging generative tools and asking how they might serve an artist’s eye. The experiments became part of the path toward CinemaMachina.
Featured conversation / November 2, 2020
Consciousness Unraveled.
AI, Quantum Biology & Origins of Life — Johnjoe McFadden
David talks with Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, about electromagnetic theories of consciousness, artificial intelligence, quantum biology, and the origin of life. The conversation captures the questions that drew David toward AI long before CinemaMachina became a film practice.
Watch the episode on YouTube ↗The crossing
Code became another medium.
After two decades working in Los Angeles real estate, David moved into software and applied AI. Through CodexDeus, his technology company, he builds software and explores what new tools can make possible.
CinemaMachina is where the earlier art practice meets that technical work. AI expands the production palette; David’s interest remains in myth, memory, vulnerability, rhythm, and the images that stay with us.
David is based in Austin, Texas, and is especially interested in art house films and new forms of AI powered cinema. Explore working with David ↗