England,
2004, 180 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
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Adam Curtis
- prod
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Adam Curtis
- scr
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Adam Curtis
- cam
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Lucy Kelsall
- editor
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Tamer Osman
- source
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BBC, W 201 Kensington House, Richmond Way, London W14 0AX, England.
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COMMENTS
Adam Curtis in person at screening to accept the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award.
OTHER
Adam Curtis has created a controversial, myth-shattering three-part BBC series to top his magnificent Century of the Self (SFIFF 2003). It would be wrong to label this epic investigation as just an attack on George Bush’s America, or on modern Islam’s susceptibility to crackpot leaders. But it would be exactly correct to charge that all those leaders are locked in a desperate conspiracy with their populations—hence with us—in which the engine of progress is no longer reason, invention or applied evidence, but fear. Adam Curtis is a Rooseveltian figure, aware that the problem is our fear of fear itself, for nothing else seems so satisfying a response to the terrible complexity of the world. And thus the most important thing to say about The Power of Nightmares is not that it responds to 9/11 but that it is the culmination of Curtis’s method worked out over 15 years and many programs. For most viewers at this Festival, the important thing will be to encounter the Curtis argument. And in San Francisco, its message may fall on friendly ears. Even so, it is Curtis’s deeper point that many of the cultural structures of liberal and enlightened America have led to this current crisis. It is not enough to blame enemies—that is fear’s easy answer. It is essential to see the malady in ourselves. But first of all, it is necessary for every citizen to see The Power of Nightmares—and probably more than once. What a festival must do in this situation is simply to play the film as often as possible.
—David Thomson
FACTOID #56
A group of renegade filmmakers who dubbed themselves Grand Central Station staged a publicity stunt on the Opening Night of the 13 th San Francisco International Film Festival by bombarding the steps of the Masonic Auditorium with 300 cream pies. Lemon meringue, anyone?
