Photofields presents Theo Anthony’s documentary All Light, Everywhere (2021) and Powerhouse short film production Human Computers (2024), both screening at Golden Age Cinema and Bar.
Anthony’s feature length documentary investigates the biases inherent in human perception. Focusing on astronomer Jules Janssen’s Passage de Vénus (1874) – considered one of the world’s first motion pictures and depicting the trajectory of Venus across the sun – the documentary explores understandings of the camera as a scientific device intended to capture absolute reality.
Directed by Liselle Mei, Human Computer is a short film exploring the work of female scientific assistants. From 1916–1968, women known as ‘human computers’ worked at Sydney Observatory on one of the most ambitious photographic endeavours in history: the ‘Carte du Ciel’ (Mapping the Stars) project. A collaboration between 18 observatories around the world, the project aimed to record all the stars in the night sky on photographic plates. During this time, female employees at Sydney Observatory classified almost 740,000 stars on 1400 photographic plates. This film focuses on Winsome Bellamy, who measured the stars at Sydney Observatory for 20 years.
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