False Future takes up the story of Louis Le Prince, the little-known inventor who succeeded in developing a working motion picture system at least five years before the Lumière Brothers, Had Le Prince not mysteriously disappeared while traveling from Dijon to Paris by train in 1890, he would most likely be known today as the originator of cinema. False Future speculates on this false-start in the history of filmmaking, focusing on the drives and desires that lie behind the invention and reception of moving images. The title comes from the French verb tense, ‘faux future’, often employed in history-writing and voice-over to knowingly ‘anticipate’ the actions of historical figures by narrating the past as if it is imminent or yet-to-happen. The author, predicting the actions of people in the past, not only plays the role of clairvoyant but also returns the reader or listener to the present tense of the time-period in question. In the case of Le Prince, the phrase ‘false future’ also refers to a present that never was, to the influence over filmmaking that Le Prince never had. Echoing descriptions of Le Prince’s workroom, the installation displays a ten-minute film that restages one of the four eight-second long films Le Prince is known to have made. We see a static shot of street- and foot-traffic on the Leeds Bridge in Leeds, England, while a French-speaking voice relates and speculates on the events of Le Prince’s life. The film is subtitled in English.