Our new Person of the week is in my opinion one of the most talented and unconventional documentary-makers of our days, Adam Curtis.
I always liked documentary as a form of entartainment but also as an alternative source of information. Mostly I liked watching documentaries about contemporary history or current affairs, but ever since I got to know Curtis’ work I learnt to love the mix of different topics he covers in his films.
These topics are all those areas of interest that most arouse my interest: politics and history, economic and power structures, human behaviour and sociology, psychiatry and manipulation, technology and management of society, Governments’ and politicians’ behaviour, in short everything what a nerdy economist/social sciences guy with a fascination for conspiracy theories can long for. (Please note that ‘fascination for conspiracy theories’ doesn’t mean I actually believe in them!)
Curtis’ work is really very extensive (see here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193231/), he started working for the BBC back in the 80s (this is his blog on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis)
Last week, being sick at home and with a lot of time on my hands, I watched a very interesting documentary Curtis directed in his early career (1984): The Mayor of Montemilone.
It’s about a Communist politician who is elected Mayor in a small town in the deep South of Italy who has to face the long-lasting problems of the Mezzogiorno such as unemployment and social immobility.
But it also investigates the conflict between the idealism of this committed local politician and the plans of the central Government for building a dam near the village as part of a regional development plan. The whole project is carried out employing companies from the North and without creating jobs for local people, which is undermining the Mayor’s authority in his constituency and frustrating his ambition to awaken the community from its social and economic lethargy.
Later on in his career, Curtis started approaching more sophisticated topics. His style can be quite controversial and he has also been critized for his “impressionistic and polemical approach”, being accused of intellectual arrogance and dishonesty.
Everything is said about him might be true, but I simply love the way his later documentaries got fiercer in trying to create interconnections between specific persons, historical facts and general developments in society which at first sight may not appear to be so obvious.
A good example of such a film is the documentary The Century of the Self, which analyses how Sigmund Freud‘s theories were used (or misused!) by one of his nephews, the American Edward Bernays (who is considered to be the father of Public Relations and modern advertising) to control and manipulate the masses.
He helped both American corporations to get the people/consumers to buy more and more of their superfluous goods, and also collaborated with the American Government helping in manipulating public opinion in order to create the political climate they needed to be able to implement their political agenda.
Freud’s nephew and PR and propaganda guru Edward Bernays
I had never heard of Edward Bernays before and watching Curtis’ documentary – with its richness in original footage and its use of unusual songs and archive images – I was really surprised to see how things which I would have thought to be so distant suddenly started to fit together.
Adam Curtis is really a master at putting together stories of people and ideas to create a new narrative which helps to better understand what’s going on in this sometimes crazy world.
I admit it’s not easy stuff (and it’s a more than 3 hours marathon!), but if you have time and are interested in a new and unusual point of view helping you to create some new brain connections, watch this documentary, it’s really worth it!
But my all-time favourite film by Curtis is without any doubt The Trap – What happened to our dream of freedom, in my eyes one of Curtis’ most ambitious and audacious documentaries.
More than one of my friends will certainly be able to confirm you that whenever I get involved in a discussion on any current topic in politics or general affairs, at a certain point I’ll always quote The Trap to make my point, so big was the impact this film had on my view on so many things!
Here is a link to watch the documentary online:
https://archive.org/details/adamcurtistrap1
In this movie you really have it all! Starting his narration back in the times of the Cold War, the concept of freedom – which us Westerners are so obsessed with – is openly questioned by Curtis and all contraditions of Western societies are mercilessly exposed. We may have been so proud of our shiny little world made out of freedom and material prosperity but in the end we were also being fooled by our leaders and politicians, trapped and doomed to live in a meaningless world.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying – and Curtis is not saying it either – that our society is bad or that other visions of the world (if there are any other left) may be better or superior to our current society arrangement.
But watching this movie at least gave me a more realistic and sober point of view on things we often give for granted, putting them in a more critical perspective. For someone like me – who always want to question the way things are – a true source of revelation and (intellectual) pleasure!
I reckon that when working on The Trap, Curtis borrowed something from the thinking of Herbert Marcuse, a political philosopher and sociologist I stumbled upon when reading about the student movement and the struggle of German society to come to terms with its difficult past during the 1960s, another topic which back then completely caught my imagination, which of course Curtis also dealt with in another of his documentaries, The Living Dead.
Herbert Marcuse
(If you are interested, I really recommend reading Marcuse’s work ‘The One-Dimensional Man’).
So, folks.. I think I gave you enough input. If you are sick or stuck at home and you have a lot of time you need to kill, you now know what you can do: watch Curtis, you won’t regret it!
oneweekoneperson 