And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine

Could there be a way to capture something from reality on film? Countless inventors in earlier centuries pondered this question. And yes, it could; in 1826 it was French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce who made the first photograph, less than seventy years later the Lumière brothers showed the very first film. Since then, things have moved fast with the development of this magical device, the photo and film camera. Today, we are flooded daily with countless (moving) images.

Where does this obsession with images come from? In this essayistic, critical documentary, Swedish filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck try to answer that question by recounting the history of the camera. A lot comes along, from Leni Riefenstahl and videos of IS to staid television programmes, advertising and Instagram, with the directors focusing mainly on the fundamental relationship between humans and images. Has man become better from all this?