Peter Watkins retrospective  

 With the war in Vietnam is escalating, there is a massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency and the Federal authorities are given the power to detain persons judged to be a risk to internal security. In a desert zone in southwest California, a civilian tribunal passes sentence on groups of dissidents and gives them the option of participating in law enforcement training exercises in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park. In an atmosphere of aggression and intimidation and in soaring temperatures, the prisoners have to fight for their lives as they are hunted down by the forces of law and order.

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