Events
Doc Preview: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
From the mind of one of Britain’s premier TV documentarians comes All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, a complex and free-associative exploration of humanity’s love affair with technology. Adam Curtis, a former lecturer of politics at the University of Oxford, has been well known for his unique style and the complexity of his arguments - showcased in the BBC series The Trap, The Century of the Self and the controversial BAFTA-winner The Power of Nightmares. He’s also a regular contributor to Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. Curtis’ new series has been heavily (and cryptically) promoted by BBC2 in recent weeks - but what’s the story behind Machines?
Borrowing a title and theme from the cult poet Richard Brautigan, the series upends the assumption that computers and the internet have made our lives easier and more free. Curtis instead argues that subservience to machinery has warped our traditional view in society, impeding mankind’s progress by starving our capacity and desire for change. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Curtis argued that his goal for the series was no less than to “recapture the optimistic potential of politics to change the world”. No pressure.
The UK documentary Us Now paints a more optimistic portait of the technological revolution. Rather than changing the old order for the worse, the film argues that social networking and open source collaboration have left global citizens without the need for old systems. Furthermore, with the tools to create and modify our own content - entertainment, programs, communities - we’re slowly becoming active agents rather than passive consumers. From the online entrepeneurs behind Couchsurfing to the football team entirely owned and managed by its fans, Us Now brings the viewer into a brave new world of technological liberation. Has the internet revolution led us into a utopia or a dystopia? That’s for you to decide. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace will be shown on BBC2 on Monday the 23rd of May; Us Now is available for streaming at Joining the Docs now.
A slam dunk for youth poetry
Established in Chicago in 1984, and now spreading across the globe, the poetry slam is an intriguing hybrid art form which synthesises the linguistic dexterity of rap music with the decorum and fair play of a spelling bee. Each performer in the poetry slam has just three minutes and a microphone to perform an original lyrical composition - while being scored harshly by a panel of judges. The best-known slam remains the annual National Poetry Slam in San Francisco, but the poetry slam is a recent American art form that hasn’t quite emerged into the spotlight as gloriously as its peers, particularly hip-hop. Perhaps the immediacy and talent of these performers can only be fully appreciated in a live setting, while artists like Kanye West and Public Enemy can sell millions of records around the world. Still, the steadily growing profile of the jam is something to be admired.
The new documentary Louder than a Bomb chronicles National Poetry Jam in 2008, a gathering of some six hundred Chicago teenagers, and has been collecting positive reviews while raising the profile of the poetry jam. The film will begin a theatrical run in the United States in May, and will be playing at Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in just a week’s time, among a small schedule of documentaries and feature films hand-picked by the man himself. As if to complete the trifecta of good news, it’s been selected as part of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s documentary schedule, among company including Becoming Chaz and Sons of Perdition.
The film follows the very similar SlamNation, a 1998 documentary directed by the Emmy award winning filmmaker Paul Devlin. The film follows the clashes of teams from Rhode Island (Team Providence), Illinois (Team Berwyn) and the New York team, featuring future megastar musician and New York Times-published writer Saul Williams. Their moments in the spotlight reveal jaw-dropping talent and nerves, but Devlin’s film scratches the surface of their mysterious world to uncover the burning ambition and fierce politics behind the performers’ skills. SlamNation is an unforgettable glimpse at a world which few have seen - it deserves to be seen by every documentary fan.
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