Britain’s biggest pop singer, Steven Shorter (Paul Jones), receives unwavering adulation and possesses total control over his rabid fans, which includes nearly the entire population. Yet Shorter is not an autonomous performer – he is little more than a puppet for the government, promoting whatever agenda they see fit. When a beautiful artist, Vanessa Ritchie (Jean Shrimpton), is commissioned to paint his portrait, she pushes Shorter to question his obedience to his manipulative handlers.
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
Director: Peter Watkins
Screenplay: Norman Bogner, Johny Speight, Peter Watkins
Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Editing: John Truper
Sound: Iain Bruce, Ken Scrivener, Roy Taylor
Producers: Timothy Burrill, John Heyman, Peter Watkins, Albert Finney
Production: Universal Pictures
UK, 1967, 103 min.