Pandora's Box was a six part 1992 BBC documentary series written and produced by Adam Curtis, which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. Curtis' later The Century of the Self had a similar theme. The title sequence made extensive use of clips from the short film Design for Dreaming, as well as other similar archive footage.
The Engineer's Plot
The revolutionaries who toppled the Tsar in 1917 thought science held the key to their new world. In fact, it ended up creating a bewildering world for millions of Soviet people. In this light-hearted investigation, one industrial planner tells how she decided the people wanted platform shoes, only to discover that they had gone out of fashion by the time that the factory to manufacture them had been built.
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FedquipWhat a pleasant surprise this morning, thanks Bluecliff! Blue your my Boy!
colinrsays...Amazing film. I haven't seen this series or The Century of the Self so this is a great post for me!
It is great to see that the narrator has remained consistent from the earliest to the most recent series The Trap: What Happened To Our Dreams Of Freedom? I also like that in this series there is not so much emphasis on background music as there was in The Trap or The Power of Nightmares, which sometimes got overbearing.
It is also great to see the themes in this film that are carried through into the other films: the use of fear to control and manage the people in the society by the rulers; the imposition of quotas and plans that are useless and stupid; treating people like selfish robots because that is what the people who put these plans into action are(!); the using of people and then disposing of them; the surveillance culture (called consumer panels in the film, but could also apply to viral marketing and invasions of privacy by the state) and the continuial return to these ideologies (the USSR here but in The Power of Nightmares Sayid Qatb's radical Islamist ideologies) being influenced by the example of the US!
Also fascinating to see a film made only just post-Soviet Union and before the experiments on the economy that destroyed the country and led to anarchy were in full swing (the same experiments that The Trap says are being done in Iraq - letting the economy collapse etc)
Thanks for this post - if I could vote this up more than once I would, lol!
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