Chronovisor

A French academic is seduced into a world of untold histories in her scholarly quest to uncover the mystery of a history-capturing camera-like machine created by clandestine Benedictine monks. An academic-noir, armchair mystery in the lineage of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.

In her research on the philosophy and neuroscience of memory, Béatrice Courte (Anne Laure Sellier) comes across the story of a Benedictine monk who claimed in the 1950s to have witnessed the crucifixion of Christ through a machine that had visually captured and could relay any moment in history through a television set. The story had caused a scandal, not least with the Vatican, and the academic becomes obsessed with this puzzling phenomenon, applying her meticulous research skills to go deeper, beyond the realms of the possible, in turn possibly sacrificing her own scholarly standing.

Rarely has the act of analogue research been so stirringly evoked as in this remarkable debut feature directed by Jack Auen and Kevin Walker of the collective Cosmic Salon (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, IFFR 2025). Captured in warm, low-lit 16mm, New York City’s libraries and a bricolage of video tapes and journal articles act as fascinating portals to questions of historiography, paranormal belief and institutional suppression, that captivate even the most agnostic among us.

– Michelle Carey

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