
"How Little We Know of Our Neighbours" is an
experimental documentary about Britain's Mass Observation movement and
its relationship to contemporary issues regarding surveillance, public
self-disclosure, and privacy. Mass Observation was an eccentric social
science enterprise founded in the late 1930's in England that combined
surrealism with anthropology. The film traces the history of the
movement from its inception as a progressive if naive "anthropology of
ourselves" in the 1930's through its reincarnation as a civil spy unit
during World War II and its eventual emergence as a market research
firm in the 1950's. The film also looks at the multiple roles cameras
have played in public space, starting in the 1880's, when the
introduction of the hand-held camera brought photography out of the
studio and into the street, and, for the first time, one could be
photographed in public without knowledge or consent. Mass Observation's
history is echoed in a range of present-day phenomena from police
surveillance to web cams to reality television that points to ways in
which our notions of privacy and self-definition have changed."
Showing at CAVS MIT
2/2 6:30 pm
Center for Advanced Visual Studies / MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning
265 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Fl / Cambridge MA 02139 / 617 253 4415