Museum Social

", I think that the generation ahead of you always tends to set you puzzles—and the thing that always puzzled me about the post–World War II generation is: Why did they go from being optimistic about science and rationality, and things like planning, to a dark, almost apocalyptic pessimism in the 1970s? It’s an incredibly quick switch, and the example I just gave you about the correct liberal way of doing a film about torture is a good one. You go out and elegantly film people, sometimes in silhouette, recounting terrible, horrible experiences—combined with haunting, Arvo Pärt–style music over bleak landscapes. And that’s it. I’m not being cynical or flippant about the peoples’ experiences—but I just think that the editorial approach was to wrap those experiences in a rigid melancholy that traps everyone—audience, filmmakers, and the tortured—in a feeling of helplessness. And it’s called moving. So I decided to do a series that went back and looked at the rise and fall of that optimism about science and rationality and planning to try and understand more why it failed."