History or historical circumstance has a complex relationship with art. The remarkable artist may appear impervious to its vicissitudes. That is, to a certain extent, his or her claim to fame. He or she is less buffeted about than most. The ancient Greek, the Elizabethan and the 19th Century Romantic all treat Life and Nature and Fate, but they did not draw the same conclusions.
Art considers more enduring, more elemental aspects of human life.
The advance by Einstein over Democritus is obvious, the advance by Rimbaud over Homer less so. Form, bound up with expressiveness, with a grasp of the concrete, the sensuous, counts for so much in art, as it does not in science. A film is a response to one's individual experience, to other films and art generally, and to history, all at once. Sorting out those different elements is the job of criticism. He has made idiosyncratic works since the early 1950s, creating his own audio-visual poetry out of documentary footage, radical politics and complex literary texts.