Action at a Distance
The starting point of this film project is Arthur Eddington’s 1919 expedition to the island of Príncipe, a Portuguese colony in the Gulf of Guinea, to observe the effects of a total solar eclipse. There are no photographic records of the experience. Only a stone stele mounted upon a whitewashed plinth —at the approximate spot where the eclipse was observed— reminds us that Eddington’s achievement signified the verification of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Storyline
The starting point of this film project is Arthur Eddington’s 1919 expedition to the island of Príncipe, a Portuguese colony in the Gulf of Guinea, to observe the effects of a total solar eclipse. There are no photographic records of the experience. Only a stone stele mounted upon a whitewashed plinth —at the approximate spot where the eclipse was observed— reminds us that Eddington’s achievement signified the verification of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.