- Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (born 1955) is a British
television documentary maker who has during the course of his television career worked as a writer, producer, director and narrator. He currently works forBBC Current Affairs. He is noted for making programmes which express a clear (and sometimes controversial) opinion about their subject, and for narrating the programmes himself.After attending
Sevenoaks School (a member of the 'art room' that produced influential musicians,Tom Greenhalgh ,Kevin Lycett andMark White ofThe Mekons along withAndy Gill andJon King of the Gang of Four) Curtis studied for a BA inHuman Sciences (which included courses in genetics, psychology, politics, geography and elementary statistics) atOxford University . Curtis subsequently taught politics there but left for a career in television. He got a job on the show "That's Life! " where he learned to find humour in serious subjects. He went on to make documentaries on more serious subjects but retained his playful tone.Curtis's intensive use of archive footage is a distinctive touch of his. An "Observer" profile said:
: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.'
"The Observer" adds "if there has been a theme in Curtis's work since, it has been to look at how different elites have tried to impose an ideology on their times, and the tragi-comic consequences of those attempts."
Curtis received the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2005. [ [http://www.sfiff.org/fest05/awards/adam_curtis.html SF Int'l Film Festival - Awards & Tributes - Adam Curtis ] ] In 2006 he was given the
Alan Clarke Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television at theBritish Academy Television Awards .Curtis is amongst those on the editorial 'steering committee' of the weekly email gossip newsletter
Popbitch . [ [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/whats_on/article1479712.ece Forget Osama, fear Blair] , The Times, 10 March 2007]Works
1988: "An Ocean Apart". Episode One "Hats Off to Mr. Wilson” (concerning the process by which the
United States was involved in theFirst World War ).1992: "Pandora's Box" examined the dangers of technocratic and political
rationality . It received theBAFTA Award for Best Factual Series. [http://print.google.com/print/doc?articleid=93LUFMjZ7HC]1995: "The Living Dead" investigated the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been used by politicians and others.
1996: "25 Million Pounds" a study of
Nick Leeson and the collapse ofBarings Bank . Won the Best Science and Nature Documentary in the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival.1997: "The Way of the Flesh" tells the story of
Henrietta Lacks , the "woman who will never die". It received the 1997 Golden Gate Award. [http://www.sffs.org/press/2005_curtis.html]1999: "
The Mayfair Set " looked at how buccaneer capitalists were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of ColonelDavid Stirling ,Jim Slater ,James Goldsmith , andTiny Rowland , all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s. It received theBAFTA Award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2000. [http://web.archive.org/web/20041019021706/http://www.bafta.org/television/archive_2000.htm]2002: "
The Century Of The Self " (BBC Two ) documented how the rise ofFreud 's individualism led toEdward Bernays ' consumerism. It received theBroadcast Award for Best Documentary Series and theLongman-History Today Award for Historical Film of the Year. It was released in the US through art house cinemas and was picked as the fourth best movie of 2005 by Entertainment Weekly.2004: "
The Power of Nightmares " (BBC Two ) suggested a parallel between the rise ofIslamism in theArab world andNeoconservatism in the United States in that both needed to inflate a myth of a dangerous enemy in order to draw people to support them. It received theBAFTA Award for Best Factual Series in 2004. [http://www.bafta.org/awards/television/nominations/?year=2004]2007: "The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom" (
BBC Two - working title "Cold Cold Heart"), a series regarding the modern concept of freedom. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk11/unplaced.shtml#unplaced_trap]2007: Curtis provided a tongue-in-cheek version of his own documentary style for a section about television news reporters in the third episode of the fourth series of the
BBC Four programmeCharlie Brooker's Screenwipe . [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9FaIyc4vpU]References
External links
* Interview: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/adam_curtis_interview/ Adam Curtis: The TV elite has lost the plot] - Interview with "The Register", November 2007.
*imdb name|id=0193231|name=Adam Curtis
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/11_november/06/adam_curtis.shtml Adam Curtis joins BBC Current Affairs]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm The Power Of Nightmares, BBC site]
*"The Observer ": [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1334518,00.html The Exorcist] (profile)
*"The Guardian " [http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html Article on the Power of Nightmares]
*"GreenCine" [http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=212 Interview from May 2005]
* [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1558934,00.html Creating Islamist phantoms ] Guardian, August 2005
* Interview: [http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0406.html It Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Thing] :Errol Morris talks with Adam Curtis, "The Believer", October 2005
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