A reminder that “every frame excludes a world beyond its edges”, this visionary film essay explores the entangled histories of cameras, weapons, policing and justice – and the limits of our perceptions.
[A]nother compelling riff on the ominous forces governing everyday life that's both alarming and awe-inspiring at once.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2021
All Light, Everywhere 2021
“All Light, Everywhere... uses the framework of surveillance technology to reveal the blind spots in our perception of the world, and the power structures that exploit them for their own agenda.
From the attempts to capture the Transit of Venus in the late 19th century and the integral role of firearm technology in the creation of the motion picture camera (thank you, Richard Gatling), to a grand tour of Axon International, the world’s leading manufacturer of body cameras and tasers for law enforcement, with forays into the early development of ‘talking pictures,’ or mugshots, for photographic classification of criminals, which has evolved into massive databases of images and footage, where AIs detect recurring patterns to learn which actions should be implemented, All Light, Everywhere uncovers the limitations of trying to understand the natural order of the world and to predict the future behavior of complex systems. For those blind spots, beginning with the optic nerve, sending the brain impulses to invent the world we see, to the instruments we utilize that erase the body behind the camera, and that, in the use of surveillance especially, are used as an extension of the state, the film reiterates that we are not reproducing the world, we are producing a new world. The act of observation obscures the observation, the act of seeing is an intervention into the world.” — Josh Kupecki, Austin Chronicle
“A brilliant and chilling study in watching the watchers... All Light, Everywhere is a gripping, mind-expanding wake-up call.” — Sherin Linden, Hollywood Reporter