The Phantom of the Operator (Le Fantôme de l'Opératrice)
The 20th century had its
invisible workforce: telephone operators. Not just "voices with a
smile", they were shooting stars in a universe of infinite progress. They
were the test pilots for the management systems of their time. The Phantom of the Operator
reveals them in a unique montage, crafted from 150 rarely seen commercial
publicity and corporate education and management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989. Splicing together
fantastic remnants of the bygone century into a dreamlike documentary, the
first independent feature by Montréal filmmaker Caroline Martel proposes a wry yet ethereal portrait of human
society in a technocratic age. It brings out from the shadows not only the
“voices with a smile”, but also some amazing 20th century corporate
films, as well as an arcane electronic musical instrument, the Ondes
Martenot, played by Suzanne Binet-Audet.
The film has been screened
internationally at some forty film festivals, including Toronto (TIFF), Amsterdam (IDFA), Taipei and Leipzig, and following its US premiere at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York (MoMA), it won the Best Experimental Film Award at the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival.
˝Almost ten years have passed since I
began my archaeological exploration of the many faces of the operators – these
women working in the service of the last century’s communication systems.
Having witnessed first-hand the last moments of their history while shooting
Hold the Line, I began to sense that the images left of them in the corporate
archives had indeed become just like phantoms, ranks of smiling simulacra.˝ (Caroline Martel)
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with:
Tovarna Rog
