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Pandora's Box (British TV Series)
''Pandora's Box'', subtitled ''A Fable From the Age of Science'', is a BBC television documentary series by Adam Curtis looking at the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. It won a BAFTA for Best Factual Series in 1993. Curtis deals with, in order: Communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy of the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana in the 1950s, and the history of nuclear power. The documentary makes extensive use of clips from the short film '' Design for Dreaming'', especially in the title sequence. Curtis's later series ''The Century of the Self'' and '' The Trap'' have similar themes to ''Pandora's Box''. Background Adam Curtis explained the background to the series: "I grew up in the late Fifties and Sixties. To me, the scientist was a heroic figure in a white coat, who stood proudly in a gleaming laboratory. Everyone was captivated by the idea that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of '' Pandora's Box'' (1992) marked the introduction of Curtis's distinctive presentation that uses collage to explore aspects of sociology, psychology, philosophy and political history.Darke, Chris (17 July 2012)"Interview: Adam Curtis."'' Film Comment''. Archived frothe original./ref> His style has been described as involving, "whiplash digressions, menacing atmospherics and arpeggiated scores, and the near-psychedelic compilation of archival footage", narrated by Curtis himself with "patrician economy and assertion". His films have won five BAFTAs. Early life Adam Curtis was born in Dartford in Kent, and raised in nearby Platt. His father was Martin Curtis (1917–2002), a cinematographer with a socialist background. Curtis won a county scholarship and attended the Seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kwame Nkrumah
Francis Kwame Nkrumah (, 21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (British colony), Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from United Kingdom, Britain. He was then the first Prime Minister of Ghana, Prime Minister and then the President of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, Organization of African Unity (OAU) and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962. After twelve years abroad pursuing higher education, developing Nkrumaism, his political philosophy, and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He formed the Convention People's Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the State (polity), state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a Libertarian socialism, libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and an authoritarian socialism, authoritarian socialist, vanguardis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin, his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism. Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk in the Russian Empire, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics after Aleksandr Ulyanov, his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Alexander III of Russia, the tsar. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in student prote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, as well as their access to and control of cultural, social, and financial capital. The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the political ideology of liberalism and its existence within cities, recognised as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system. In communist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialisation and whose societal concerns are the value of private property and the preservation of capital t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Engineering (political Science)
Social engineering is a term which has been used to refer to efforts in influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale. This is often undertaken by governments, but may be also carried out by mass media, academia or private groups in order to produce desired characteristics in a target population. Origin of concept The Dutch industrialist J.C. Van Marken ( nl) used the term ''sociale ingenieurs'' ("social engineers") in an essay in 1894. The idea was that modern employers needed the assistance of specialists in handling the ''human'' challenges, just as they needed technical expertise (traditional engineers) to deal with non-human challenges (materials, machines, processes). "Social engineering" was the title of a small journal in 1899 (renamed "Social Service" from 1900), and in 1909 it was the title of a book by the journal's former editor, William H. Tolman (translated into French in 1910). With the Social Gospel sociologist Edwin L. Earp's ''The Socia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksei Gastev
Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev () (8 October 1882, Suzdal, Vladimir Governorate – 15 April 1939, Kommunarka, Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary, a pioneering theorist of the scientific management of labour in Soviet Russia, a trade-union activist, and an avant-garde writer and poet. His idea on labor management is one of the prototypes that Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel '' We'' satirizes. Biography Youth of a revolutionary Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev was born in the small central Russian town of Suzdal. He grew up in an idyllic neighbourhood with large cherry orchards a short distance from the centre of the town. The towns inhabitants were mostly artisans - cobblers, tailors, hatters, painters, etc. Gastev’s father Kapiton Vasilevich Gastev was a teacher, a school headmaster and an inventor. Among other things, he invented an electrical apparatus for the treatment of rheumatic ailments. He died when Alexei was two years old. Gastev's mother, Ekaterina Niko ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Revolution Of 1917
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and Russian Civil War, a civil war. It can be seen as the precursor for Revolutions of 1917–1923, other revolutions that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, such as the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The Russian Revolution was a key events of the 20th century, key event of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution was inaugurated with the February Revolution in 1917, in the midst of World War I. With the German Empire inflicting defeats on the front, and increasing logistical problems causing shortages of bread and grain, the Russian Army was losing morale, with large scale mutiny looming. Officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, Second Party Congress in 1903. The Bolshevik party, formally established in 1912, seized power in Russia in the October Revolution of 1917, and was later renamed the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party, and ultimately the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Its ideology, based on Leninism, Leninist and later Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist principles, became known as Bolshevism. The origin of the RSDLP split was Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries, as opposed to the Menshevik desire for a broad party membership. The influence of the factions fluctuated in the years up to 1912, when the RSDLP formally split in two. The political philosophy of the Bolsheviks was based on the Leninist pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Genome
The BBC Genome Project is an online searchable database of programme listings initially based upon the contents of the ''Radio Times'' from the first issue in 1923 to 2009. Television listings from post-2009 can be accessed via the BBC Programmes site. History Prior BBC Genome is not the BBC's first online searchable database. In April 2006, they gave the public access to Infax – their only electronic programme database at the time. It contained around 900,000 entries but not every programme ever broadcast, and it ceased operation in December 2007. The front page of the website is still available to see via the Internet Archive. After Infax ceased, a message on the website said that it would be incorporating in the information into individual programme pages. In 2012, Infax was replaced by the database Fabric but this is only for internal use within the BBC. ''Radio Times'' In December 2012, the BBC completed a digitisation exercise, scanning the listings from ''Radio Times'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Trap (television Documentary Series)
''The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom'' is a BBC television documentary series by English filmmaker Adam Curtis. It originally aired in the United Kingdom on BBC Two in March 2007. The series consists of three 60-minute episodes which explore the modern concept and definition of freedom, specifically, "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom." Production The series was originally to be called ''Cold Cold Heart'' and was scheduled for broadcast in 2006. Although it is not known what caused the delay in transmission, nor the change in title, it is known that a DVD release of Curtis's previous series '' The Power of Nightmares'' had been delayed due to problems with copyright clearance due to the large quantity of archive material used in Curtis's montage technique. Another documentary series (title unknown) based on very similar lines—"examining the world economy during the 1990s"—was to hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Century Of The Self
''The Century of the Self'' is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." Episodes Overview Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed our perception of the mind and its workings. The documentary explores the various ways that governments, global organizations and corporations have used Freud's theories. Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed in part one. His daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychoanalysis, is mentioned in part two. Wilhelm Reich, an opponent of Freud's theories, is discussed in part three. Along these lines, ''The Century of the Self'' asks deeper questions a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
