A Fantastic Machine review

The Fantastic Machine, Directed by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck

My relationship with images is weird for someone who has no artistic ambition. 

My dad had cine reels of me and my brother as cheeky tykes in bionic man t-shirts and hair pulling with calming mum on the screen encouraging waving. We have them now on DVD. Other items Dad is still on the ever-present journey to snappy snaps. Seeing how he files his pics on his iPhone, I should pop by and tip the guy once a month for his patience.

I loved the control. I was renting a film and going forward and back. For my 13th, my parents got that package deal in curry. I linked that up to the rental. I’d love to regale you how I used it to make my doctor compilations. I looped that scene in weird science when a girl playing the piano got her dress blown. Great days.

But that permanence and control see the film throughout with a certain askance sense of humour and wit. But dark and tart at the same time.

Purely made of clips and using chronology for the start and end, voice-overview leads us through eras and cultures with great compassion and concern. We see victims of tragedy and the photographers monetising that tragedy. For me, the ISIS outtakes are the definition of absurdity; we know who they are and what they do, yet they are buffons in front of the camera like everyone else.

As we move into social media and new fakes, we see the need to control the narrative through imagery, to see reductive people taking photos in the white house shouting evidence… it’s not..its paper, but you took a picture like a cop, so the proof…is frightening.

But there is a natural look at brain chemistry and its effects ect on thinking. MeeI am meeting people in remote cultures and showing them photos of themselves for the first time. To a young ir who has gone from steamer to maturing into porn is not anything depressing. But before you shed a tear, you swirled to a world of extreme height photography I could not watch; I mean, it was WTF-level stuff.

We thought about editing and control. We sent an image into space of the best of us. Has the camera turned on our shadows or reality? This is a mesmerising tribute to the psychology of the camera, and Roland Barthe fans will have a field day.

I’m off to Google Kym Malin.