We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Movies are a conspiracy. – Gena Rowlands (Minnie and Moskowitz)
After a conspiracy-minded father’s sudden death, his daughter inherits his patent for an electromagnetic healing device. Invention is an unusual and deeply personal film, a collaboration between experimental filmmaker Courtney Stephens and actress Callie Hernandez. The film is based on Hernandez’s family history and the archives of her eccentric late father – a quack healer and self-proclaimed “idea salesman.”
Through the lens of film and conspiracy theory, Invention explores the process of grieving a complicated parent. Shot on 16mm film in Massachusetts, its dialogue and visual language evoke the spirit of American transcendentalists. Intimate unease and noir-like mystery are intricately intertwined as Callie Hernandez (or a version of herself) searches for the truth about her father, an inventor of devices for which he claimed untapped powers, whose death is not what it seems. Her journey leads her into the American backwoods, populated by oddballs, fools, vulture funds, and the occasional kindred soul, constantly reminding us how much our loved ones hide from us, both in life and in death.
This enigmatic cinematic work is tailor-made for our age of post-truth, fake news, and alternative facts, where fiction and fact bleed into one another with dizzying effect. As film critic Richard Brody puts it, Invention delivers a precise portrait of the American state of mind and its “epidemic inability to distinguish fact from fiction.” Stephens and Hernandez’s joint cinematic investigation, in the style of docu-fiction, questions why grief and conspiracy intersect in our subconsciousness, revealing the foundational myth of Americana – the idea of radical self-transformation and its darker implications. (Dina Pokrajac)
Awards & Festivals:
Locarno Film Festival (2024) – World Premiere, Best Performance; Filmfest Bremen (2025) – Most Innovative Film; New Directors / New Films (2025)
Courtney Stephens is a screenwriter and director based in Los Angeles. Her documentary The American Sector (co-directed with Pacho Velez), about fragments of the Berlin Wall relocated to the U.S., was named one of the best films of 2021 by The New Yorker. Her essay film Terra Femme, composed of amateur travelogues shot by women in the early 20th century, premiered at MoMA and toured internationally as a live performance. She is the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright for India. Invention (2024) is her narrative feature debut.
