The Lichtenberg Effect

Scott Calonico / Germany / 2026 / World Premiere / 14 min.

synopsis

The quiet geometry of 16mm surveillance footage from the Stasi secret police and files from New York’s Red Squad, found in the New York City Municipal Archives, assembles an architecture of surveillance in which observation is honed into a weapon. A detached AI voice guides us through the precision and errors of this targeting: within the analogue dispositives of the previous century, the blueprints of today’s algorithmic control begin to emerge.

“I trained a synthetic AI voice engine, “Danny”, to read the historical metadata logs. The resulting machine cadence forces the audience to confront how chilling it feels when intimate human routines are reduced to clinical data points. This project is a forensic look backward to understand the invisible algorithmic cages built around us today.” — Scott Calonico

biography

Scott Calonico (1968) is an American director, journalist and former archivist who studied at the Department of Radio, Television and Film at the University of Texas at Austin and journalism in London. He divides his time between Scotland and Germany. He focuses on the history of the everyday, bringing archival material to life by combining animation, photography and music. The Ji.hlava IDFF has screened his films Final Draft (2014), Lone Star Statement (2015) and The Escape Agents (2018).