Invention

After the unexpected death of a conspiracy-minded father’s unexpected death, his daughter receives his patent for an experimental healing device. INVENTION explores the process of grieving a complicated parent, and the filmmaking itself becomes a part of the process. The film fictionalizes the aftermath of actress Callie Hernandez’s father’s death, featuring the real archive of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor in the late 90s thru 2020. INVENTION is a collaboration between director Courtney Stephens and actress / filmmaker Callie Hernandez, examining the construction of fantasy as a response to loss, inadvertently touching on how the American public processes this time of national decline, and the evolution of fringe medical culture over the past twenty five years.
“I was interested in the unsettling aspects of irreversibility and what it does to a person; the very thing we can’t change in real time, but we do try. Grief can be a conspiracy in-and-of-itself and was something I wanted to investigate through the process of making this film. And so – we did.” (Callie Henandez) (kw)