Peter Watkins retrospective  

The film depicts the prelude to, and the immediate weeks of the aftermath of, a Soviet nuclear attack against Britain. The narrator says that Britain’s current nuclear deterrent policy threatens a would-be aggressor with the devastation from Vulcan and Victor's nuclear bombers of the British V bomber force. Although it won an Oscar for Best Documentary, it is fiction. It was intended as an hour-long program to air on BBC 1, but it was deemed too intense and violent to broadcast. It went to theatrical distribution as a feature film instead. Low-budget and shot on location, it strives for and achieves convincing and unflinching realism.

Awards

Motion Picture and Science Academy Awards “Oscars” – Best Documentary Award, 1967

Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films – Golden Mikeldi Award, 1967

“BAFTA” – British Academy Film Awards – Best Short Film Award, 1967

“BAFTA” – British Academy Film Awards – UN Award, 1967

Venice Film Festival – Special Prize, 1966

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