Homo Sapiens 1900

The documentary is about eugenics. Eugenics spread across Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The man credited with founding it was Francis Galton. He presented it as a branch of science. Its claim was that the human stock could be improved by controlling who had children. On that view some people were to be prevented from having any. There was no scientific ground for the claim. It became state policy all the same. The film shows how those policies were carried out. The methods differed from one country to another. It is built on footage and documents from the period itself. The telling does not defend eugenics, but sets out where the idea led. Peter Cohen made the eighty eight minute documentary, a Swedish production finished in 1998.