And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine

"A meticulous dissection of image-making and a mapping of its movement through society, directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck use a mind-boggling array of archival footage to collage this sociological study by tracking the transmogrification of photographic philosophy and technology over human history. Weaving and contrasting some of the most iconic, harrowing, and viral images in our collective memory with user-generated footage that transports the viewer through time, space, and experience, Danielson and Van Aertryck intricately fashion an argument about how humans see ourselves that feels rigorous, learned, and current."

"In the beginning was the ‘camera obscura’: this simple device contained a hole that let light through, thus creating an image projected onto a surface, through a process that was easily reproduced at home... Then in 1828, Nicéphore Niépce succeeded in printing this image onto a plate and in doing so, invented photography. Since then, the world has been animated by a frantic quest to create images, and currently numbers 45 billion cameras. Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck take us on a fast-paced journey through this revolution, offering an amusing, concise and intelligent history spanning the creation of the first images to today’s production of content: from the first photograph to images of the Earth from the Moon, from propaganda images to beauty-filter selfies, from game shows to cat videos, humanity seems to have recorded everything by constantly developing technologies that modify our experience of reality. And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine is a dizzying dive into the heart of humanity and its world of images, from a critical and existentialist point of view. So, is this machine still fantastic?"
(Aurélien Marsais - Visions du Réel)