True Stories: We Live in Public, More4 | reviews, news & interviews
True Stories: We Live in Public, More4
True Stories: We Live in Public, More4
A troubling film that says as much about us as it does the dot-com pioneer, Josh Harris
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
The fears of a clown: Dot-com pioneer Josh Harris learnt that the future isn't always bright
With the last ever series of Big Brother dominating Channel Four’s schedules for the rest of the summer, the first TV screening of this Sundance Film Festival award-winner couldn’t have been better timed. Because the chillingly disconcerting “art project” that dot-com pioneer Josh Harris devised back in 1999 (just before Big Brother came on air for the first time) made the world’s most controversial reality TV show look like Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, by comparison. American film director Ondi Timoner’s documentary is an unsettling look at Harris’s struggle to find himself which could be viewed as a cautionary tale for any parents who use their television or PC as a child minder.
With the last ever series of Big Brother dominating Channel Four’s schedules for the rest of the summer, the first TV screening of this Sundance Film Festival award-winner couldn’t have been better timed. Because the chillingly disconcerting “art project” that dot-com pioneer Josh Harris devised back in 1999 (just before Big Brother came on air for the first time) made the world’s most controversial reality TV show look like Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, by comparison. American film director Ondi Timoner’s documentary is an unsettling look at Harris’s struggle to find himself which could be viewed as a cautionary tale for any parents who use their television or PC as a child minder.
But despite the now familiar concept, this underground-bunker world had more to do with Orwell’s Big Brother than Endemol’s
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