Saturday, March 4, 2017

HyperNormalisation
— Adam Curtis, something of a BBC cult figure, seems to favor rambling over a direct approach as he blends archival footage with his own voice-over and ends up with a patchwork that packs a wallop. It’s part conspiracy theory, part history, and a lot of detours—almost like being lost in a Google search loop or falling for one more YouTube video, and then another and another. In the end, Curtis manages to add enough of a unifying gesture to this look at the current political landscape, to give us a sense of how we got where we are and to leave us a little conflicted as to where we're headed. It’s a very different kind of storytelling that’s greatly influenced by the internet and, at 165 minutes, you may be tempted to pass on it but it’s worth the time. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2017, but it’s also on YouTube.)

[2016. 166 min. Written and directed by Adam Curtis. With Adam Curtis, Donald Trump, Valdimir Putin, Victor Gotbaum, Patti Smith, Henry Kissinger, Hafez al-Assad, Thomas Schelling, Ronald Reagan, Timothy Leary, Ruhollah Kohomeyni, and many more.]
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/adam-curtiss-essential-counterhistories

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