SOUND AND SIGHT FROM SUNDANCE

If 'Fantastic Machine' takes a look at the essential slipperiness of the moving image, 'The Tuba Thieves' asks viewers to listen more carefully

- Uday Bhatia

Our programming aims to make their brains accessible. To keep them entertained and disconnected. Our product is available brain time." These lines-something John Berger might have written-are from a book by the CEO of France's first commercial channel, in which he suggests his job, the job of TV, is to sell Coca-Cola. It's quoted in Fantastic Machine, which played at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck's documentary is a lively, thoughtful look at the essential slipperiness of the moving image.

Though the film tracks back to 1828 and the first still photograph, and on to Muybridge, Edison and the Lumière brothers, its thematic tale begins with another pioneer. George Méliès, the narrator says, is "one of the first examples of man manipulating the moving image". In 1902, Méliès staged the coronation of British king Edward VII in his studio with French actors, after failing to get permission to shoot the real thing. The king enjoyed the re-enactment; his admiring description of a movie camera gives this film its title. "Honourable Englishmen, you're being fooled," a reporter at the time warned. Over a century later, the machines are still fantastic and their images still deceptive, despite our familiarity with them.