Pandora's Box (1992 Series by Adam Curtis) DivX, 640x480 46 mins x 6 episodes, 370MB Upped by argentum Repacked as per forum request by Intensecure. Rebroadcast 2005 on UKTVHistory 01 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. 02 To The Brink of Eternity. Focusing on the men of the Cold War on whom 'Dr Strangelove' was based. These were people who believed that the world could be controlled by the scientific manipulation of fear - mathematical geniuses employed by the American Rand Corporation. In the end, their visions were the stuff of science fiction fantasy. 03 The League of Gentlemen. Thirty years ago, a group of economists managed to convince British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora's Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks - is their game finally up? 04 Goodbye Mrs Ant. A modern fable about science and society, focusing on our attitude to nature. Should we let scientists be the prime movers of social or political change when, for instance, DDT made post-war heroes of American scientists only to be put on trial by other scientists in 1968? What kind of in-fighting goes on between rival camps before one scientific truth emerges, and when it does emerge, just how true is it? 05 Black Power. A look at how former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an advanced utopia. But as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn't control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt. 06 A is For Atom. An insight into the rise and fall of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl which changed views on the safeness of this invisible fuel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For 15 years, Adam Curtis has concentrated on a cultural history behind the politics of the 20th century and beyond. In 1992, he made Pandora's Box, six "fables" on the consequences (often dangerous) of political and technocratic rationality, especially when used to crush common sense and a clear reporting of the facts. Nothing concerns Curtis more than the way public relations and spin doctoring have become ways of masking the true nature of modern history - and nothing is so vital to the new forms of modern bureaucratic totalitarianism, the dulcet "order" that has come to fill the ground left by fascism and communism. In other words, the "enlightened" problem solving favored in the most advanced countries, but employed to obfuscate democratic impulses. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adam Curtis is a British television documentary producer. He currently works for BBC Current Affairs. The Guardian wrote: [Curtis] is perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in Britain. His trademarks are long research, the revelatory use of archive footage, telling interviews, and smooth, insistent voiceovers concerned with the unnoticed deeper currents of recent history, narrated by Curtis himself in tones that combine traditional BBC authority with something more modern and sceptical: "I want to try to make people look at things they think they know about in a new way." [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html) Curtis's intensive use of archive footage is a distinctive touch of his. An Observer profile notes: Curtis has a remarkable feel for the serendipity of such moments, and an obsessive skill in locating them. 'That kind of footage shows just how dull I can be,' he admits, a little glumly. 'The BBC has an archive of all these tapes where they have just dumped all the news items they have ever shown. One tape for every three months. So what you get is this odd collage, an accidental treasure trove. You sit in a darkened room, watch all these little news moments, and look for connections.' The Observer adds "if there has been a theme in Curtis's work since, it has been to look at how different elites have tried to impose an ideology on their times, and the tragi-comic consequences of those attempts." History Curtis previously taught politics at Oxford University but left for a career in television. He got a job on the show That's Life where he learned to find humor in serious subjects. He went on to make documentaries on more serious subjects but retained his playful tone. Works 1992: Pandora's Box examined the apocalyptic political fallout of nuclear scienc. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series. [2] (http://print.google.com/print/doc?articleid=93LUFMjZ7HC) 1995: The Living Dead argued that fighting World War II was a mistake and questioned how history is written. 1999: The Mayfair Set looked at how buccaneer capitalists were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, all members of The Claremont club in the 1960s. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Factual Series or Strand in 2000. [3] (http://www.bafta.org/television/archive_2000.htm) 2002: The Century Of The Self (BBC Four) documented the rise of Freud's individualism led to Edward Bernays's consumerism. It received the Broadcast Award for Best Documentary Series and the Longman-History Today Award for Historical Film of the Year. 2004: The Power of Nightmares (BBC Two) drew parallels between the rise of Islamic terrorists and the US neoconservatives who exploited the terror they created.