The Power Of Nightmares/Adam Curtis

Internet Archive (plays fast or download)
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

follow episode 1 up with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C5XuylNFLo

:-)

[/i]Curtis has a remarkable feel for the serendipity of such moments, and an obsessive skill in locating them. 'That kind of footage shows just how dull I can be,' he admits, a little glumly. 'The BBC has an archive of all these tapes where they have just dumped all the news items they have ever shown. One tape for every three months. So what you get is this odd collage, an accidental treasure trove. You sit in a darkened room, watch all these little news moments, and look for connections.'[/i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis

how exactly does he do this? i mean he cant go through every single tape each time he makes a new doc, does anyone know his technique? does he keep a database of all interesting potential scenes?

is he working on anything now? i recently watched his 1996 doc about nick leeson & barings bank, such a fascinating well-made doc, i can't believe it hasn't been repeated recently.

i just started watching the 1st series of Mad Men and it seems kinda...informed by Century of the Self, somehow. maybe it's just that the production design reminds me of Curtis's archive footage.

I wonder if this will come to London.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/20/it-felt-like-a-kiss

Got tickets for the 9th, really looking forward to it. If it's a critical and commercial hit then no reason why it should not play elsewhere (a bit like Albarn's Monkey opera did after debuting at the MIF) - I imagine that Punchdrunk could adapt the staging for different venues?

looks awesome!

Can't say I'm keen - Albarn and Kronos, especially the latter, just can't stand anything they touch.

I hope the future interweb stuff gets broadcast on TV.

The entire run is completely sold out already up here.

NI and myself saw the first night preview of IT FELT LIKE A KISS last night and chatted to the great man! I'd love to say more but i won't spoil the surprises.

it was just the most incredible thing. when i left i was a gibbering mess. ive set up a group on facebook for people who've 'done' it.

at the end curtis was saying it wouldn't be transferrable to tv because of all the copyright issues. i wish i could've recorded my brain for the 3 hours i was in there last night.

Wow - super excited for this now. Roll on the 9th! Seeing Kraftwerk tomorrow at the MIF too as "filler" until then...

sold out too fast. gutted.

MIF so far has been an absolute bobby dazzler - Kraftwerk were *awesome* and It Felt Like A Kiss properly ace too. Just got back from it and still mulling over the whole thing. I probably read too much beforehand so was ready for some of the setpieces (which removed a bit of the thrill), but as a whole it was so immersive and exciting: brilliantly conceived and staged, and the central film was amazing.

The reviews I've seen have a bit of a downer on the final section, but I enjoyed this part the best esp. the "do this" area and the final enforced separation from the rest of the group. Would really like to go through it again tbh to be able to spend more time nosing around the rooms and the "clues" etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/07/it_felt_like_a_kiss_the_film.html

brilliant, been waiting so long for this

Bill A, and anyone else who went to IFLAK in Manchester, there's a facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=98110067894

apparently it's been put on in London and Moscow - if anyone's even slightly interested, buy a ticket the moment they go on sale!

I watched this this morning and am sort of shaky from it - it wasn't even that it was in-and-of-itself powerful, but it was exhausting because i kept having to try and work out what connections I was supposed to be drawing and whether I thought they were appropriate connections or conspiracist nonsense.

argh when i say 'this' i mean 'it felt like a kiss'

main problem i have with it is that the music is so great i zone out of whatever point he's making and enjoy it on a 'incredibly awesome 50 min music video' level. which is great, but means im gonna have to watch it again *properly*. i guess i need curtis himself to explain things more directly - at least an article by him would be good.

watched the trap again this week and was surprised to see he reuses quite a bit of footage in IFLAK

he reused a fair amount from Power of Nightmares in the Trap as well.

Watching It Felt Like A Kiss again this morning. Still superb, formally his best film by some distance imo

Is it online somewhere? Still haven't been able to see it.

hi Col1n! I think the BBC was streaming it but probably not to overseas viewers. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a torrent (or fragments on Youtube), but I could always mail you a copy if you want to contact me off-list. Alternatively, are you on K4r4g4rg4 or any such sites?

Ah:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfIFeqScJz8

and so on...

Oh no audio!

try here instead:

http://www.greylodge.org/tracker/

Thanks Adam! Not on Karagarg@, don't really fuck with torrents unless I have to.

Yes, I see. I'm never sure about the ethics of torrenting (is this a word?) hard to see stuff, myself. It's not talked about much?

There is a ton of Adam Curtis's stuff available for download from archive.org. My favorites are "The Trap" and "Century of the Self." I tried watching "It Felt Like A Kiss on an airplane, on my ipod, and that was the wrong way to watch it. It put me in a funk. I had to listen to so much Real McCoy to recover.

I'm not so worried about the ethics -- most of the stuff I would want is more or less out of circulation. I just hate watching anything longer than half an hour on my computer.

will 'power of nightmares' ever get a u.s. dvd release, i wonder? watched the first part of it in a college class a couple years ago and thought it was fantastically well done.

FAO Curtis stans (kurdistans?!): he has a new show coming soon. According to Charlie Brooker's twitter:

1) It is called 'All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace'.
2) Twitter shows up in it.
3) It'll be on the TV quite soon.

Have really enjoyed his blog posts, but nuff excited for another series.

Adam Curtis on the death of Bin Laden

read headline, clicked back to this thread

ok went back in

he's kind of getting a lot worse as time wears on

When communism collapsed in 1989, the big story that had been hardwired into citizens of western countries – that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force – came to an abrupt end.

now... was communism a 'story', or was it on some level an actual historical reality?

sorta don't see what the omg what an asshole thing is with trying to sort out historical/cultural narratives

like there's a GOP narrative of People Are Being Taxed to Death! which is bullshit, but if you show me a guy whose taxes are a burden that doesn't validate their narrative & undermine any detailing of it

he's a broken record on some things

kinda baudrillardwave solipsism

do i have to point out the obvious and say curtis has a big narrative he puts on everything?

manipulation of sheeple with invented narratives employing a corruption of freud -- something like that

of course he does, everybody who believes in narrative as a functioning trope knows that they have to work within that framework, except for Joan Didion who believes that narratives are inherently broken