thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

Bitter Lake
Adam Curtis 2015

Bitter Lake explores how the realpolitik of the West has converged on a mirror image of itself throughout the Middle-East over the past decades, and how the story of this has become so obfuscating and simplified that we, the public, have been left in a bewildered and confused state. The narrative traverses the United States, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia—but the country at the centre of reflection is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted political figureheads across the West with the truth of their delusions—that they cannot understand what is going on any longer inside the systems they have built which do not account for the real world. Bitter Lake sets out to reveal the forces that over the past thirty years, rose up and commandeered those political systems into subservience, to which, as we see now, the highly destructive stories told by those in power, are inexorably bound to. The stories are not only half-truths, but they have monumental consequences in the real world.

Oh Dearism II
5:08
Adam Curtis 2014

A look back on the news events from 2014 reveals a confusing, muddled mess. Things are increasingly chaotic, along with the reporting of the events in the culture of 24-7 rolling news, sound-byte feeds and the Internet. The result, as we see, is not a coherent public understanding of these complex events, but more a profound mass-confusion, with discourse destroyed, which in-turn broods disengagement from the world and further atomises an already divided-and-conquered public. It is this response that is a powerful form of social control, and is by design…

Every Day is Like Sunday
44:47
Adam Curtis 2011

As we wait to see whether Rupert Murdoch will fall from power and lose control of News International, Every Day is Like Sunday tells the forgotten story of the dramatic downfall of Cecil King—the newspaper mogul who used to dominate British media in the 1960s, before Rupert Murdoch arrived.

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
Adam Curtis 2011

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built — “Although we don’t realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.”

The Trap
Adam Curtis 2007

“If one steps back and looks at what freedom actually means for us today, it’s a strange and limited kind of freedom. The West apparently fought the Cold War for ‘individual freedom,’ yet it is still something our leaders continually promise to give us. Abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to force ‘freedom’ on to other people has led to bloody mayhem. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the government has dismantled long-standing laws that were designed to protect individual freedom.”

The Power of Nightmares
Adam Curtis 2004

Is the threat of radical Islamism as a massive sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to ‘unite and inspire’ people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies?

The Century of The Self
Adam Curtis 2005

To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?

The Mayfair Set
Adam Curtis 1999

The Mayfair Set is a series of films that study how buccaneer capitalists of hot money were allowed to shape the Thatcher government in Britain during the 1980s. The series focuses on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith and Tiny Rowland — all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s, and how their distinct financial roles influenced the Thatcher government…

The Living Dead
Adam Curtis 1995

The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is a series of films that investigate the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been manipulated and distorted by politicians and others for various means of control...

Pandora’s Box
Adam Curtis 1992

Pandora’s Box — A fable from the age of science, is a six part series examining the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism, tying together communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.

25 Million Pounds
52:24
Adam Curtis 1996

25 Million Pounds details the collapse of Barings Bank in the mid 1990s — one of the oldest and most prestigious merchant banks in Britain, run by the same family for decades with extensive ties to Britain’s elites…

Oh Dearism
6:16
Adam Curtis 2009

As the mainstream media attempts to create a simple narrative from hugely complex events, much is obviously lost in the translation — most often purposefully. This short film attempts to contrast the nature of this narrative in the 1990s, where events were almost universally portrayed as ‘the little guy versus the big guy’ to the post Rwanda narrative of ‘scattered terrible things happening everywhere, Oh Dear’. Perhaps the film suggests that it is not that we actually can’t do anything about these events, it is only that mainstream news presents these events within a framework that makes it seem that way, and how that in itself is a very powerful means to social control…

It Felt Like A Kiss
54:00
Adam Curtis 2009

Based on the immersive theatre production and experimental work by Adam Curtis, It Felt Like A Kiss shows the story of an enchanted world that was built by American power as it became supreme post-war, and how those living in that dream world responded to it. Using extensive archive footage and music from many sources, the film explores the theme of how power really works in the world…

Richard Nixon — Paranoia and Moral Panics
6:30
Adam Curtis 2010

“This is a film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon. Just like him, we have all become paranoid weirdos. Its the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better”…

The Way of All Flesh
51:50
Adam Curtis 1997

The Way of All Flesh traces the story of Henriettta Lacks as she dies of cancer in 1951. Before she died cells were removed from her body and cultivated in a laboratory by scientists in the hope that they could find a cure for cancer. The cells known as the HeLa line have been growing ever since, and the scientists found that they were growing in ways they could not control. The cells transformed modern medicine — the Polio vaccine — but they also became caught up in the politics of our age, shaping the policies of countries and of presidents and even becoming involved in the cold war, as scientists were convinced that in her cells lay the secret in how to conquer death...

The Rise and Fall of The TV Journalist
3:50
Adam Curtis 2007

“This is a short and possibly unfair history of the rise and fall of the television journalist as a hero”…
Murdoch’s Revolution
4:59
Adam Curtis 2010

This short clip by Adam Curtis goes over the history of the Murdoch media empire, drawing parallels to new media machines such as Google.