Russia - TraumaZone

H

homesickblues

Well-known member
Sometimes you come across some interesting documentaries on BBC iplayer. I just finished this one, 7 50min episodes. Very well made and describes ordinary life in Russia under a series of corrupt governments. Some things I remember from news articles at the time but this links a lot of things together, leading up to how Putin was made president.
 
I'm more than happy for my licence feet go towards keeping Adam Curtis in a room with a pile of videos, some editing equipment, and a coffee machine. Only thing I missed with Traumazone was his musical soundtrack, but he fills that gap with lingering camera work.
 
Does he do a voiceover for this doc? Thought I'd found one, but it was all text, no voice-over. I'm used to Curtis docs having voice-over. Always enjoy his docs. Really well made and researched.
 
All text I think. I imagine that's why he's not using music, so you concentrate on reading, rather than become all alpha wave active to an ambient soundtrack.
 
I've not got round to this one yet but I'm a huge Adam Curtis fan, his documentaries are probably the best on TV.

It's ironic that a documentary about the history of Russia (during a period when Russia is involved in active conflict) is actually intended as a lesson to the UK and its leadership.
 
I've watched 5 of them so far. All fascinating but very different to Adam Curtis' usual style. Much more chronological than usual, it doesn't constantly jump all over the place, demonstrating the myriad of knock on effects seemingly unconnected decision have. It's much more linear and there's no voice commentary from him too.

They are slow and detailed and at times and hard to watch, but if you like his previous stuff, there's no reason why'd you'd not like this.
 
I watched the first one. Good but I rarely have time to sit and watch something intently, and this isn't the sort of thing you can half watch whilst you do something else. Hypernormalisation (I think it's called) is probably my favourite documentary from the last decade.
 
Just caught onto this after hearing Adam Curtis interviewed on five live by Nihal Arthanayake on Wednesday. 000,000s of hours of unseen footage in BBC vaults never shown before edited by him into an amazing documentary. So many incredible things I didn't know about in first episode, going to have to binge watch the rest now.
 
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