Homo Sapiens 1900 is a 1998 documentary directed by Peter Cohen, about various eugenics methods that were in practice in Europe during the first part of the 20th century.
Eugenics is to be the scientific credo of the 20th century. The man credited with its invention, Francis Galton, says it is based on the concept that the evolution of man is crippled by the ill-conceived – those unfit to breed. The study of eugenics thus would concern itself with distinguishing the weed from the good flowers.
Eugenics offers two approaches: positive eugenics, and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics aims towards creating better humans by careful mating, based on one’s genetic makeup. Negative eugenics, on the other hand, seeks to prevent those deemed inferior from reproducing, and thus not impeding man’s evolution.
Very interesting film, I give it 8 out of 10. Two criticisms. First, the pace is slow, Speed it up to 1.25 and it becomes MUCH more watchable. Second, in all the discussion of eugenics in the U.S. there was not one mention of Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood and her plan to abort and sterilize the “inferior black race” out of America. She deserves a special place in Hell, and to leave any reference to her and her evil ideas out of this doc is inexcusable.
I only lasted 6 minutes. I mostly listen to documentary instead of watching them, as I’m often doing something else but MY GOD. Could the narrator s p e a k a n y s l o w e r ?
This was extremely s l o w m o v I n g and tedious. I am so disappointed because this is such an interesting historical subject.
Despite a slideshow of striking old photographs of people from this era, which I enjoyed, I only lasted 43 minutes.