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The All-Consuming Century
Via Adfreak, I just found out about a four-hour BBC documentary showing here in New York through tomorrow: Century of the Self, a four-hour series about Freud, Bernays and the rise of consumer culture and mass persuasion in the 20th century.
I had never heard of the documentary before, which is a bit surprising because it's from 2002, but not when you consider that the series wasn't made available commercially on VHS or DVD. And why might that be? Because, like a lot of BBC documentaries, the producers couldn't clear the rights to historical footage and images for commercial release.
Fortunately, British journalist and copyfighter Tony Gosling has made a VHS version of Century of the Self - along with other restricted BBC documentaries - available cheaply "to encourage the commercial release of these culturally valuable works." Should a film that he's offering become available commercially, Mr. Gosling will stop selling it.
Unfortunately, Gosling only has the movies in the European PAL format. While newer VCRs in the United States may be compliant, a solid majority aren't. If there are any techies out there who'd be willing to transfer "Century" to a digital format, please let me know. I would love to purchase a copy myself. Or maybe we could even make a torrent file of it.
Posted by Carrie McLaren on 09/07/2005 | Permalink
Comments
I have a bit of a problem with selling these when they can be spread for free via torrents. That's a much better way to spread these widely. In fact, the series circulated via bittorent last year and earlier this year. I have the series in 480 x 368 AVI files.
The seeder I got this from had transferred this from VHS, so there are probably better transfers out there, but my copy is still not hard on the eyes to watch.
Let me know here if you want it Carrie. I don't put my email here because I don't want it harvested by bots. If there's enough interest I can seed it on one of the open torrent sites.
I can transcode these to NTSC DVD format, but there'd probably be a quality loss from the format change. Your call.
Posted by: mark | Sep 9, 2005 7:38:01 PM
I saw this at a festival here in SF a few months back. I highly highly highly reccommend it. Afterwards I searched and searched for a copy. In the last few months it has turned up as a torrent file. I have two different copies from various internet sources and one is much better than the other. Because of the way the festival was set up, I ended up watching all 4 episodes back to back. 4 hours straight. I left feeling like a had taken a pill that fed my brain a college course.
By the way, the same filmmaker, Adam Curtis, made another interesting movie called the Power of Nightmares.
P.S. That bilderberg guy kinda weirds me out.
Posted by: Steve Lambert | Sep 10, 2005 2:28:56 AM
here is a link to a torrent file for the film, but i'm not sure if it's active: http://isohunt.com/download.php?mode=bt&id=4089888
Posted by: ivan | Sep 10, 2005 11:45:45 PM
This series has come back up on uknova.com, which is where I got it originally.
Posted by: mark | Sep 16, 2005 11:39:27 PM
I would love to find a copy of this series but I'm not exactly an internet expert as far as file sharing goes. I went to uknova.com but it said it was not a site for the public. I tried the isohunt link to no avail. I'm willing to buy a copy. On VHS for North Americans. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks so much.
Posted by: rebecca | Sep 22, 2005 2:27:09 PM
i went to www.bittorrent.com to download something that could read torrent files ( . . .? i'm assuming . . .), then went to http://isohunt.com/download.php?mode=bt&id=4089888 to download the bbc documentary, then when i wanted to open it i received a message in the torrent player window that i had 6 days remaining. absolutely none of this makes sense to me . . . like rebecca i'd much rather pay someone a few bucks then venture out into this technological world that i am clueless about . . . :P
p.s. can someone tell me if 6 days is logical??
Posted by: shannon | Sep 22, 2005 6:04:05 PM
Hm, 6 days doesn't sound right (though it *is* a huge file). We're going to be posting it on the Illegal Art Exhibit site, but we can't sell it - no one can - without legal risk. So unfortunately, downloading is the best bet.
Posted by: carrie | Sep 22, 2005 6:09:14 PM
thanks for responding . . . after it got going the days dropped away. i'm currently at 1 day and 12 hours with 11% completed (compared to 6 that seems like nothing!) . . . i feel like i've just stepped though the looking glass . . .
Posted by: shannon | Sep 23, 2005 2:37:39 AM
I'm currently receiving the bittorrent file using the above link, but am showing only .504 copies (one peer). It'll take 36 hours to get that. The 36 hours doesn't bother me so much, but the lack of a complete copy does. ANyone else have the complete file that is willing to reseed? Thanks.
Posted by: openmind | Sep 23, 2005 7:59:03 PM
I once digitized the VHS; if anyone wants to do something with it email me@aaronsw.com.
Posted by: Aaron Swartz | Sep 24, 2005 10:44:20 PM
