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Adam Curtis on his new film

Film-maker Adam Curtis
  • Posted at 5:50pm
  • 28 July 2009
  • by JackSeale-RT

Acclaimed documentary-maker Adam Curtis (The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares, The Trap) has made a new film, It Felt like a Kiss. Commissioned as part of an interactive theatre piece at the Manchester International Festival and billed as "starring Saddam Hussein, Lee Harvey Oswald, Doris Day, Enos the chimp and everyone above level seven in the CIA", it looks at America's rise to political and cultural superpower status, and how that confidence has since been undermined. Curtis describes it as "a lot more visceral, emotional and visual than my previous work."

Like Curtis's recent TV documentaries, It Felt like a Kiss is a collage of obscure archive film, often with only tangential or impressionistic relevance to the subject matter - but now, the fascinating, often disturbing and sometimes blackly funny clips are annotated only by a 50s/60s pop soundtrack and the occasional caption.

"It's not a history," Curtis tells Radio Times. "It's an experimental film about a time when America was rising to supreme power in the world. Two things happened at the same time, which would be the roots of many of the uncertainties we feel today. One was the CIA secretly overthrowing foreign governments, the unforeseen consequences of which have come back to haunt us.

"The other was the rise of the radical individual, whose goal was to satisfy their inner desires. It was a glorious vision, but it had a downside. When you are alone in the dark, you imagine all sorts of things and have no idea whether they are true or not. Out of that fear came fantasies and conspiracies that undermined America's confidence."

There are no plans to show It Felt like a Kiss on TV - but it is available, for a limited time, at bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis.

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