“Early phone era sci-fi ghostly”
Vancouver Sun, 8-Oct-2004
by Tom Charity

23rd Vancouver International Film Festival

The Phantom of the Operator
12:30PM today at the Pacific Cinémathèque

Although the images all arise from hundreds of industrial education film of the last century, Caroline Martel’s spellbinding film feels more like science fiction than documentary… but it’s science fiction in the past tense, recasting the utopian industrial fantasies of yesteryear into ghostly emanations from another world. Narrated – although that word doesn’t do justice to her performance – by Pascale Montpetit, Phantom of the Operator chronicles developments in telecommunications from the phone companies’ training and recruitment films, when the feminine “voice with a smile” vouched progress with a human face.

- retour en haut -