We are in the year 1871. A journalist for Versailles Television broadcasts a soothing and official view of events while a Commune television is set up to provide the perspectives of the Paris rebels. On a stage-like set, more than 200 actors interpret characters of the Commune, especially the Popincourt neighborhood in the XIth arrondissement. They voice their own thoughts and feelings concerning social and political reforms. The scenes consist mainly of long camera takes.

Awards

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards – Independent / Experimental Film and Video Award, 2005

Peter Watkins

Active between the mid-1950s and the 1990s, granted with an Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1966 with The War Game, Peter Watkins is a docudrama and false documentary pioneer. He graduated from Cambridge University and London Academy of Dramatic Arts and worked in the advertisement industry before starting to direct. His films investigate the current political conjuncture through contemporary or historical settings, and critically address the limits and possibilities of the documentary form. At the heart of Watkins’ work lies the criticism of audiovisual media as an instrument of power and our relation and participation to a film or television documentary. The director used to live and create in Vilnius, however, at the moment he resides in France.

 Filmography

 La Commune (Paris, 1871), 2000

The Freethinker, 1992–1994

The Journey, 1987

Evening Land / Aftonlandet, 1977

The Trap / Fallan, 1975

The Seventies People, 1974

Edvard Munch, 1973

Punishment Park, 1971

The Gladiators (The Peace Game), 1968

Privilege, 1966

The War Game, 1965

Culloden, 1964

The Forgotten Faces, 1960

Diary of an Unknown Soldier, 1959