His list of films that 'express the social and political mood of their time':
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/lists/adam-curtis-10-films-capture-mood-times
― Alba, Wednesday, 24 March 2021 17:24 (three years ago) link
Gotta admit I wasn't expecting some of those
― kinder, Wednesday, 24 March 2021 20:20 (three years ago) link
Scream 2 was a fun surprise.
― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Wednesday, 24 March 2021 20:25 (three years ago) link
Stalker, Society, and Starship Troopers are very on brand and I think quoted in his work. But some of the others are slightly unexpected. Including The Souvenir is cheating the "political mood of their time" criteria a bit! BG is probably haunted by the Bush Era in the early seasons but then more influenced by the pure ridiculum of Lost by the end.
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 March 2021 20:40 (three years ago) link
Would like to hear of some other examples of "that growing fascination and fear of the human body that grew up in the 1980s" besides Society, Cronenburg and the like.
― Ignore the neighsayers: grow a lemon tree (ledge), Wednesday, 24 March 2021 21:21 (three years ago) link
cocoon
― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 24 March 2021 21:22 (three years ago) link
Teen Wolf
― Alba, Wednesday, 24 March 2021 21:46 (three years ago) link
Haha he writes exactly like he talks. Would much rather hear/read him talk about movies than history and society tho
― Dan I., Thursday, 25 March 2021 00:04 (three years ago) link
Including The Souvenir is cheating the "political mood of their time" criteria a bit!
That choice leapt out at me too, but rather than put it down to cheating it made me interesting in rewatching the film through that lens. I wanted to rewatch it anyway.
― Alba, Thursday, 25 March 2021 00:31 (three years ago) link
it is an interesting 80's period movie in that it is genuinely hungry and curious about reaching the parts others of that genre don't even seem to know exist, but what I meant was most of the other movies were of their time rather than looking back. I know you've clocked that yourself, but just saying!
― calzino, Thursday, 25 March 2021 00:47 (three years ago) link
movies on the list - I should add
― calzino, Thursday, 25 March 2021 00:49 (three years ago) link
Ah, I see! No, I hadn’t really clocked that. I just meant that I saw it as such a personal rather than political film.
― Alba, Thursday, 25 March 2021 00:56 (three years ago) link
the personal approach in this movie is still imbued with the politics of the era and could potentially be a very crude bunch of caricatures in a bad 80's period movie, and there are lots of them. I respect Hogg's naturalistic approach. But still a movie that couldn't be more detached from the era it was made in.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 March 2021 01:09 (three years ago) link
I just mean that in the sense that Cutis usually seems quite rigidly obsessed with the significance of what popular culture says about the socio political milieu it was created in. I'll let him off with this one!
― calzino, Thursday, 25 March 2021 01:24 (three years ago) link
Surprised "I May Destroy You" isn't listed. He brought it up on his interview on the Red Scare podcast as "a series of films" that captures our age like nothing else. ilx will be pleased to hear.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Thursday, 25 March 2021 02:06 (three years ago) link
Would much rather hear/read him talk about movies than history and society tho
Hard disagree. I enjoy Curtis' programmes but, as I think calzino pointed out before, he tends to be a total dolt in interviews.
This list would be ok w/o the blurbs but it's so embarassing - Starship Troopers is prophetic because "the humans send giant armies to kill the insects in the deserts of the remote planet"? Like the US bombing a middle east country was some sort of wild sci-fi in '97?
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 25 March 2021 11:30 (three years ago) link
💥NEW EPISODE💥 @owenhatherley, @zinovievletter, and Alberto Toscano on Adam Curtis' Can't Get You Out of My Head. We chatted about Curtis' politics, the changes in his documentary style since the early 1990s, and why he avoids talking about neoliberalism:https://t.co/cuFxPERLPG— Politics Theory Other (@poltheoryother) March 28, 2021
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 28 March 2021 19:13 (three years ago) link
lol I'd never heard that rumour before that he went door knocking for Corbyn in '19. He does have some strange definitions of what the Left is in his work and of course there are going to be constrictions on what stories he decides to tell when he is selling his work to the BBC and is completely reliant on the BBC archives.
― calzino, Sunday, 28 March 2021 21:41 (three years ago) link
https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/on-adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/
excellent and otm piece by Juliet Jacques
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 13:07 (two years ago) link
good piece, nice to read a balanced critique for a change
― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Friday, 30 April 2021 13:35 (two years ago) link
yeah I think she's nailed just about everything that is good and bad about him there and I learned that he cut his teeth on That's Life! (execrable 70's middle-class television for non UK's!)
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 13:44 (two years ago) link
"arguing that the US counter-culture had failed to change the world because it had become too concerned with individual self-expression"
this was the most ridiculous bit of Hypernormalisation
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 13:52 (two years ago) link
The son of English surrealist poet and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings’s cinematographer, Curtis i did not know this
― Fizzles, Friday, 30 April 2021 13:55 (two years ago) link
meh, he clearly used his surrealism/avant-garde doc connections to get a plumb production job on That's Life!
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 14:02 (two years ago) link
or possibly a bat soup production job!
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 14:08 (two years ago) link
ha this is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Friday, 30 April 2021 16:31 (two years ago) link
B-, music cues need work
― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Friday, 30 April 2021 16:38 (two years ago) link
any essay that contains both this passage I had to spend ninety minutes per day holding Perspex dilators inside my ‘neo-vagina’ to stop it closing. I binged on Curtis films while I did this, and eventually discovered my clitoris worked while watching THE CENTURY OF THE SELF.) and this oneGraeber argued that the morally and intellectually bankrupt Labour establishment, already furious about losing two leadership elections in what felt like (and was) a repudiation of their public-private partnerships and interventionist foreign policy, deliberately sabotaged their own party to defeat a paradigm shift against them. They did this mainly by casting themselves as supporters of the EU, without questioning the EU’s migration policies or imposition of austerity on Greece and elsewhere, and using Corbyn’s refusal to disregard the EU referendum result as a ‘wedge issue’ to divide his base, hoping to demobilise his young supporters and peel away the liberal end of his voter coalition. In the process, many of Labour’s ‘centrist’ MPs lost what were once safe seats in Leave-voting constituencies and handed a thumping majority to one of the most right-wing governments in British history, who immediately voted through the hardest possible Brexit.is like it was made by robots for me to like it.
― One Of The Bad Guys (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 April 2021 17:05 (two years ago) link
Good read. Thanks calzino
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 30 April 2021 19:00 (two years ago) link
this is absolutely excellent. jacques is really very smart and very unusual now to see someone who can really draw on and bring together the political historical and aesthetic critiques that area ll necessary to thinking about this and using it as a jumping off point to think more broadly and critically about our present moment.
― plax (ico), Friday, 30 April 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
i haven't read much by her, the few bits i have were frustratingly short and now seem even more so after reading this where its really clear that she is well able to draw out a complex critique from a pretty dizzying breadth of insights as uh tracers post intimates
― plax (ico), Friday, 30 April 2021 19:32 (two years ago) link
although lol tbf i only half watched this i thought it was boring as sin and i cant really deal w/ curtis's tone though if i like the music and archive footage
― plax (ico), Friday, 30 April 2021 19:34 (two years ago) link
the main reason I liked Juliet's piece, aside from the fact that she's always an interesting writer was because I also think Curtis is good and love loads of his work but also consider him very problematic and very myopically dumb at times, although possibly this is by design or part of price for access to the bbc archive or maybe he's just a bit of a dickhead! But the segments on Julia Grant are very empathetic and heartfelt and incredibly moving imo and the cold arrogance of the Mengellesque clinician John Randell, was so enraging and powerful.
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 20:01 (two years ago) link
I'd felt the series left Julia Grant on a strange note as well. Then heard Curtis on Chapo talking about the very happy ending she has in the film.... in her 5 seconds dancing in the closing montage thing.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 30 April 2021 20:21 (two years ago) link
there is a bit where Julia encapsulates all the shit she has gone through, can't remember exactly how she put it - but it wasn't exactly a happy ending but sort of defiantly "I've taken so much shit, just punch me to the deck right here and I won't be surprised"
― calzino, Friday, 30 April 2021 20:59 (two years ago) link
That's a fantastic piece. I struggle with Curtis - I find the programmes physically exhausting to watch for some reason - but this is the summary of his work I've seen.
This is an extraordinary dip into the (relatively) recent past: A look at BBC2 in the first week of June 1992, when PANDORA’S BOX was first broadcast, shows an OPEN SPACE strand where the public could make programmes; documentaries on the failure of the Green Revolution in India, post-Communist Czechoslovakia and the assassination of high-ranking Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich; Toni Morrison on THE LATE SHOW; a set of films on culture and identity from a black perspective; a dance film by Anthony Minghella; a showcase for new filmmakers; a documentary on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, written by poet Damian Gorman, and another on Frida Kahlo, narrated by Helen Chadwick in Mexico; films directed by Alex Cox and Karel Reisz; a political drama made in Colombia; and daily Open University content.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Saturday, 1 May 2021 10:36 (two years ago) link
*this is the *best* summary of his work. Gah.
This Politics, Theory, Other podcast (with Owen Hatherley and Alberto Toscano) is a good companion piece: https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/hypercurtisisation-w-owen-hatherley-juliet-jacques-and-alberto-toscano
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Saturday, 1 May 2021 10:38 (two years ago) link
irrationally angry about people on Twitter who, like clockwork, decide to do a bit on Adam Curtis, a person who I have ambivalent feelings about in many ways but who is one of just a handful of half-decent documentary-makers working in the country. hey twitter people, why not instead do a bit on the tidal wave of shit that is 95% of factual programming?
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 12 June 2021 14:42 (two years ago) link
if they had the insight of the above articles then great, however they do not have any insight, just the same crap jokes.
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 12 June 2021 14:44 (two years ago) link
julia grant docs are streaming on iplayer either now or later this week
― oscar bravo, Saturday, 12 June 2021 17:30 (two years ago) link
New Curtis series coming October 13 - "Russia 1985-1999 TraumaZone: What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy":https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/adam-curtis-russia-1985-1999-traumazone
― ernestp, Sunday, 25 September 2022 03:14 (one year ago) link
TraumaZone?
― Karl Malone, Sunday, 25 September 2022 03:34 (one year ago) link
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/adam-curtis-russia-1985-1999-traumazone
starts 13th october
― koogs, Friday, 30 September 2022 15:07 (one year ago) link
oh, didn't scroll up, sorry ernest
― koogs, Friday, 30 September 2022 15:08 (one year ago) link
TraumaZone, a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis on the collapse of communism and democracy in Russia, comes out tomorrow. It is different from Curtis's previous films--there's no voice-over or overarching argument. We started work before the current war; I was a producer for this. pic.twitter.com/6fC2dq2woc— Grigor Atanesian (@atanessi) October 12, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 12 October 2022 14:50 (one year ago) link
I was wondering if the no voiceover was just a feature of the trailer. If there is a subtitle narrative I'll still be reading it in his voice.
― calzino, Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:43 (one year ago) link
my Adam Curtis wishlist is more interviews, less voiceover. So sounds good.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:49 (one year ago) link
more crazy frog less burial
― mark s, Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:54 (one year ago) link
that's right
― saigo no ice cream (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:56 (one year ago) link
no overarching argument eh
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 12 October 2022 15:57 (one year ago) link