Adam Curtis

In 1951, a woman died in Baltimore, U.S.A. She was called Henrietta Lacks. These are cells from her body. They were taken from her just before she died. They have been growing and multiplying ever since. There are now billions of these cells in laboratories around ...  (more)

The story of America's rise to power starting with 1959, using archival footage and US pop music to highlight the consequences to the rest of the world and in the peoples' minds.  (more)

25 Million Pounds details the collapse of Barings Bank in the mid 1990s primarily by a broker called Nick Leeson, who lost £827 million ($1.3 billion) by speculating on futures contracts. The film contextualises the downfall as the history of Barings Bank was one ...  (more)

We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They do not care. We say we care, but we do nothing, and nothing ever changes. It is normal. Welcome to the post-truth world. How we got to where we are now…  (more)

An experimental documentary that explores Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S. and the role this has played in the war in Afghanistan.  (more)

Short film examining the global events of 2014 to reveal a chaotic morass, the reporting of which is increasingly difficult to comprehend in the context of the 24-hour news cycle and the internet. Screened during Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe special.  (more)

As we wait to see whether Rupert Murdoch will fall from power and lose control of News International, Every Day is Like Sunday tells the forgotten story of the dramatic downfall of Cecil King—the newspaper mogul who used to dominate British media in the 1960s, ...  (more)

Short film using the paranoia of Richard Nixon to explore how a similar outlook on life has been propagated on a larger social scale in the new media age and the resulting moral panics and immobilisation of politics. Screen during the fourth episode of the second ...  (more)

Short film about how mainstream media simplify complex events and present them as "scattered terrible things happening everywhere, Oh Dear", leaving the public feeling powerless to do anything about them. Screened in the third episode of the first series of Charlie ...  (more)

Short film chronicling the transformation of mainstream media and the balance of political power in the last few decades by looking at how the role of the broadcast journalist has changed since the 1950s. Screened during the third episode of the fourth series of ...  (more)

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later needed to be demolished.  (more)

Dino Labriola runs the small town of Montemilone in the deep south. He was elected the first Communist mayor. Now he faces the problems of a town dying on its feet. There are no jobs, the young emigrate, the old have given up hope and government aid often goes ...  (more)

In 1949, at the height of the Cold War, the British and American Governments decided to fight back at the growing Soviet Empire with a secret plan, the Albanian Subversion, in which the CIA and MI6 attempted to overthrow the Albanian government and to weaken the ...  (more)

In The Road to Terror, revolutionaries tell how their dream descended into a nightmare of terror and execution. They speak as exiles in Paris, a city that is preparing to celebrate the glories of the first mass revolution of 1978. Behind its strange images, the ...  (more)

The Rosie Kay Dance Company present a piece about the strange history and pop-cultural aftermath of CIA mind control experiments during the Cold War, with documentary segments by Adam Curtis.  (more)

The largest leisure and shopping complex in Europe, the Metro Centre in Tynemouth, and its creator John Hall.  (more)

Short film for Vice Media about the illusion of stability, freedom, and prosperity in the West, comparing it to life in the Soviet Union during the 1970s. Ends with a trailer for HyperNormalisation.  (more)

Behind the scenes at Selfridges, a department store on Oxford Street, London.  (more)

This short film uses the history and figure of the Murdoch media empire as a vast invasive machine, to draw parallels to new media machines such as Google that are not only more invasive, but more pervasive than anything the Murdoch media empire has managed. Why ...  (more)

Documentary about the town of Walton-on-the-Naze, directed by Adam Curtis  (more)