PODCASTS: Adam Buxton talks to documentary film maker Adam Curtis.
Adam Curtis is one of my favorite documentary filmmakers and Adam Buxton hosts one of my favorite podcasts. So I was very excited to hear Buxton's latest episode featured Curtis himself in a fascinating listen. Curtis describes his work as journalism that happens to be expounded via the medium of film. What I especially love about Curtis style of filmmaking is the way he uses old discarded BBC news footage, the kind of footage you usually don't get to see, and plays it back to us in long, uncut edits that viewers are not used to seeing with today's short attention spans.
“BITTER LAKE is an epic documentary about the history of the West’s involvement in Afghanistan, mostly assembled from a 26 terabyte archive of unused footage shot for BBC News. Previously sitting on videotapes in cupboards in foreign outposts, it was assiduously collected by a BBC camera operator working in Afghanistan and passed along to Curtis.”
Bitter Lake
Below is a brief description of the podcast from Adam Buxton...
“We met on the 16th December 2016 in the meeting room of the London production company where my producer friend Seamus works. In the wake of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election the conversation often focused on a favourite theme of Mr Curtis: where the pursuit of individualism is leading us. We also talked about how Adam uses music in his films and I sneaked a bit of death chat in there too. You’re welcome!”
If you've never seen the work of Adam Curtis you can view some of his excellent documentaries below...
The Power of Nightmares
HyperNormalisation
The Century of the Self (Full Documentary)