Photo courtesy of the BBC

Reader Christopher Larner alerts us to an interesting documentary which:

“has started showing on BBC2 in the UK – It is made by Adam Curtis who also made ‘The Century of the Self’ and ‘The Power of Nightmares’. This new one is called ‘The Trap: What happened to our dreams of freedom’ and attempts to show how our/and our politicians notions of freedom were born out of the cold war and ‘game theory’ – as a filmmaker he perhaps ties too many disparate narratives together into a seemingly cohesive whole – the editing, footage and insight provided are nevertheless compelling.”

Here is the link. YouTube has, for some unknown reason, deleted parts 5 and 6. Amongst other subjects, these segments criticize psychiatry.

“After being flagged by members of the YouTube community and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature.”

Internet pundit Momus was luckier than us (dependent on YouTube), he was sent the documentary on DVD. He appropriately labels Curtis a television essayist and juxtaposes his documentary to Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics.

K-Punk has this (There’s nothing very surprising in Adam Curtis’ The Trap: What happened to our dreams of Freedom, compelling as it is.).

See also: freedom