Laurence Boyce | On 12, Jun 2021

Director: Theo Anthony
Cast: Theo Anthony, Keaver Brenai, Robert Cunniff
Certificate: TBC
Watch All Light, Everywhere online in the UK: Sheffield DocFest 2021

All Light, Everywhere is streaming as part of Sheffield DocFest – find out more about the festival here.

At their most pure, both photography and cinema have been described as “painting with light”. This metaphor, rife as it is with poetry, is perhaps at odds with some of the terms used within the mediums, which have always had a vague ring of the abrasive, even the militaristic. We snap pictures. We capture images. We shoot footage. In All Light, Everywhere director Theo Anthony examines the idea of the camera as a weapon and explores how a gaze that would ostensibly appear to be neutral is still subject to manipulation and confirmation bias.

The film primarily consists of three threads. One follows the corporation Axon, which provides large swathes of the US Police Force with body cameras and taser equipment. Another follows the history of photography and examine not only how new innovations in the medium were often subsumed into the military but also how many scientific ideas that used photography at their heart would give rise to many troubling theories, such as eugenics. An additional thread sees the owner of a spy plane – which was grounded after a public outcry, when it was discovered that the police had been using it in secret for several months – attempt to woo the local community to get his plane back into the air.

Taking a kaleidoscopic and staccato approach, with present day and history weaving in and out of proceedings, the film begins to build up a picture of a society that still believes in the sanctity and fidelity of the image. Body cameras are becoming more essential police forces as there is a belief that they represent the reality of what happens in a situation. But, as the film points out, it still misses out an important component: the police officer themselves, who stay invisible behind the camera. As the film delves into the history of Alphonse Bertillon, the French scientist who believed that criminals could be photographed and then future possible offenders be identified by physical characteristics, it notes that the photographs themselves were not to blame for this fallacy but how they were being used. As the film points out, any measurement is only as accurate as the ones who are doing the measuring.

Crucially, this not a film about “fake news” and the manipulation of imagery, which perhaps one would expect in today’s day and age. Instead, it examines how an image – even if it is unaltered and untampered – is far from being neutral and objective. The fact that it is still often considered so is something that leads us all down a dangerous path. The film revels in a number of ironic moments, some of which have a dark humour. An Axon bigwig leads the camera crew through their office complex boasting about their transparency, before pointing out the R&D department with tinted windows so no one can see what the people inside are doing. A section shot at a police training workshop for body cameras is done so in complete darkness, so we can’t see footage on the screen: we only hear people’s interpretations afterwards.

Indeed, the film in itself is constantly reminding us of its own structure and that it should not be taken at face value itself. We see protagonists being put into place and hear “action” being called. Sometimes there’s a voiceover, while at others a subtitle tells us what is going on. The artificiality – and manipulation – at the heart of cinema is something we are repeatedly reminded of.

In eschewing bombast and stridency for a more poetic and lyrical approach, Anthony has ironically created a powerful piece of work that – rather than asking us to question what we are seeing – asks to think about why and how we are seeing in the first place.

 

All Light, Everywhere is streaming at DocFest 2021 until 8.30pm on Sunday 13th June.

Add to Watchlist