Future Shock (1972) (by invasive)
“Future Shock is a 1972 short documentary film directed by Alex Grasshoff and narrated by Orson Welles. It was screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn’t entered into the main competition.”
Source: youtube.com
From Start to Finish: The Story of Gray Column, a film by Commonwealth Projects about De Wain Valentine’s eponymous work, the innovations and expertise of its production, and the challenges presented by its conservation. It includes interviews with artists, conservators, scientists, collectors, and historians and traces the story about the presentation of this fragile yet monumental work after it was re-acquired by the artist and put into safe storage for many years.
The Outcasts (1985)
A BBC documentary about a Norfolk Hell’s Angels gang called The Outcasts. Featuring a number of arcing narratives, the main one of which traces funeral preparations after the tragic and gruesome death of a gang member. With copious amounts of sex, drugs and RnR, the documentary explores gang mentality and hierarchy by showing how various members deal with collective responsibility and personal tribulations. The soundtrack is a combination of heavy metal, prog rock and what sounds like some contributions from the Radiophonic Workshop. On the whole it is a disturbing portrayal with some graphic scenes of mindless littering. JC
Tate director Nicholas Serota meets Richter in his studio in Germany to talk about his influences and methods of working (22mins)
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) - Ep. 2 by Adam Curtis
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) - Ep. 1 by Adam Curtis
Oramics (2009)
“A brief glimpse of Daphne Oram’s pioneering and unique Oramics synthesizer, designed in 1957 after she left the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop to pursue the project.
This short film features Dr Mick Grierson, Director of The Daphne Oram Collection, acquiring the synthesizer from a collector in 2009.
The machine is now in the hands of The Science Museum in London and is currently being restored. It hasn’t been performed with since the 1970s.”
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (1972)
Architectural critic Reyner Banham explores Los Angeles in this 1972 BBC documentary
“Peter Reyner Banham (1922 - 1988) was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. In the latter he categorized the Los Angeles experience into four ecological models (Surfurbia, Foothills, The Plains of Id, and Autopia) and explored the distinct architectural cultures of each ecology.”
Synth Britania
A BBC documentary following the generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage. Featuring Throbbing Gristle, New Order, The Normal, Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk, Wendy Carlos, John Foxx and more
80 Blocks from Tiffanys (1979), Dir.Gary Weiss
“The gangs in the South Bronx (about 80 blocks from Tiffany’s in more ways than one) are handled with kid gloves in this one-hour treatment by Gary Weis. The more articulate members of the Savage Nomads and Savage Skulls are interviewed while the less articulate minorities who incongruously brandish swastikas are glossed over. Aside from gang members venting about “social injustice” and cops, there are interviews with the police, a priest, and some community workers. In general, the documentary indicates that this one small part of the U.S. would gladly be engaged in a mini-civil war if left to ferment on its own. ~ Eleanor Mannikka,”
The London Nobody Knows (1967) - with James Mason
Lesney Product Testing 1982
The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past was the second major documentary series made by British film-maker Adam Curtis. This series investigated the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been used by politicians and others. It was transmitted on BBC Two in thespring of 1995.
Part 1
On the Desperate Edge of Now (30 May 1995)
The title of this episode comes from a veteran’s description of the uncertainty of survival in combat. It examined how the various national memories of theSecond World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period.
For Germany, this began at the Nuremberg Trials, where attempts were made to prevent the Nazis in the dock, principally Hermann Göring, from offering any rational argument for what they had done. Subsequently, however, bringing lower-ranking Nazis to justice was effectively forgotten about in the interests of maintaining West Germany as an ally in the Cold War.
For the Allies, faced with a new enemy in the Soviet Union, there was a need to portray World War II as a crusade of pure good against pure evil, even if this meant denying the memories of the Allied soldiers who had actually done the fighting, and knew it to have been far more ambiguous. A number of Americanveterans related how years later they found themselves plagued with the previously-suppressed memories of the brutal things they had seen and done.
Part 2
You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough (6 June 1995)
The title of this episode comes from a paranoid schizophrenic seen in archive film in the programme, who believed her neighbours were using her as a source of amusement by denying her any privacy, like a goldfish in a bowl.
In this episode, the history of brainwashing and mind control was examined. The angle pursued by Curtis was the way in which psychiatry historically pursuedtabula rasa theories of the mind, initially in order to set people free from traumatic memories and then later as a potential instrument of social control. The work of Ewen Cameron was surveyed, with particular reference to the Cold War theories of communist brainwashing and the search for hypnoprogammedassassins.
This programme’s thesis was that a search for control over the past, via medical intervention, had to be abandoned and that, in modern times, control over the past is more effectively exercised by the manipulation of history. Some footage from this episode, an interview with one of Cameron’s victims, was later re-used by Curtis in The Century of the Self series.
