A surveillance state, told through its own cameras

Benjy Kirkman's video for Garbage's "There's No Future In Optimism", shot by Will Gething with colour at Coffee & TV, tells a surveillance-state story partly through the surveillance itself: CCTV framing, 16mm zooms, handheld.

We could not find an interview with the director, so we are not going to tell you what he intended. What is on screen is enough: the decision to let the oppressive apparatus supply the camera angles is an old idea executed cleanly, and cleanly is the hard part.