Fantastic Machine (15)

★★★ A screen history from the Lumières to YouTube erotica and Isis bloopers, this Swedish-Danish documentary deploys an eclectic barrage of clips for an earnest study. ~ Financial Times.

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The camera is a fantastic machine.

To explore, explain and expose how our unchecked obsession with image has grown, filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck turn their cameras directly on society itself to take a look at how this obsession has begun to change our behaviour.

From the Camera Obscura and the Lumière brothers to YouTube and the world of social media, Fantastic Machine chronicles how we went from capturing an initial image of a backyard to a multi-billion-pound content industry in just 200 years.

With exclusive use of both archival and found footage, this outstanding new film uses the very medium it examines in an exhilarating, hilarious and thought-provoking way.

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★★★ From fake news in 1902 to livestreaming a man asleep – and everything in between, the big picture gets a bit lost but this whirlwind history shows how cameras dazzle and deceive us. ~ The Guardian.