Peter Watkins retrospective  

All movies

Privilege

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

Film sessions

09.24 Thursday
  • Skalvija (Vilnius) 20:45 Presentation

09.27 Sunday
  • Skalvija (Vilnius) 15:50


Information

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.