Discipline and Punish: Theo Anthony’s Documentary Essays / ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE

Director: Theo Anthony, USA, 2021, 105 min., ENG + ENG subtitles

Following the success of Anthony’s feature debut Rat Film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, his newest film continues in his essayistic take on the topic of systems and technologies that appear to observe impartially but are in fact nothing but discriminatory surveillance. A rise in the use of police body cameras serves Anthony as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic portrait of our collective history of cameras, arms, police control and justice. Beginning with the 19th century, when the emerging art of photography progressed hand in hand with colonialism and the development of automatic firearms, all the way to the headquarters of Axon, which now has a near-monopoly on bodycams among the United States Police, Anthony charts a view of the relationship between photography and violence. His narrative features an abstract exploration of the nature of perception and specific examples of how perceptive restrictions are weaponized. All Light, Everywhere presents this authoritarian use of photography without losing sight of the medium’s subversive potential.