Directors
In Focus
December 10
- 14, 2003
Peter
Watkins
 There
is a strong case to be made that Peter Watkins is the most neglected
major filmmaker at work today. Over the course of forty years
the British-born director has managed, against trying and often
adversarial circumstances, to produce a highly original and
powerful body of work that engages the worlds of politics, art,
history, and literature. That these films remain obscure is
a function of such factors as suppression by producers or weak-kneed
film distributors, surprisingly unsympathetic—at times
hostile—critics, and the filmmaker’s own legendary
iconoclasm. Watkins has spent the bulk of his professional career
in self-imposed exile from his homeland, a result of the BBC’s
banning his 1966 film The War Game and the critics’
drubbing of Privilege the next year.
Despite marginalization,
Watkins survives. Having forged a unique cinematic approach—sometimes
described as "documentary reconstruction"—he
has attempted in recent years to decentralize the power structure
of his own films by incorporating the real-life opinions of
his performers and inviting critical analyses of the directorial
approach to take place within the films themselves. –
John Gianvito
Film @ International House is pleased
to present a long-overdue survey of the work of this uncompromising
and thought-provoking filmmaker and extend a special thanks
to the director himself for his invaluable assistance and encouragement.
Tickets are $6.00
general admission, $5.00 I House members, students and seniors.
Available one hour in advance at the International House box
office.
Wednesday, December 10
at 7:00 PM
Culloden
dir. Peter Watkins, UK, 1964, 16mm, 75 mins, b/w
Watkins’
first film for the BBC, Culloden is a historical reconstruction
of the last battle fought
on British soil and the ensuing destruction of the Scottish
highland clans after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Praised
by critics for its graphic realism and cinéma-vérité style,
the film has even been employed by the U.S. Army for a course
in military history. For Watkins, however, the acute realism
is a weakness, allowing viewers a comfortable distance from
the truly disturbing issues being raised: an underlying commentary
on imperialism and so-called "documentary" journalistic
practices.
Preceded by:
The
Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins
dir. Geoff Bowie, Canada, 2001, Beta SP, 76 mins, color
With
the current proliferation of TV channels, documentaries are
enjoying an unpre-
cedented
boom fueled by audiences seeking an alternative to "infotainment".
But now documentary
filmmaking, too, finds itself constrained by the imperatives
of television. Director
Geoff Bowie proposes an alternative in the working methods of
Peter Watkins in
this passionate film motivated by his own reflection upon the
future of the documentary.
Thursday, December
11 at 7:00 PM
Edvard
Munch
dir. Peter Watkins, Norway, 1976, 35mm, 210 mins, color,
Norwegian w/ English subtitles
This
intensely personal biographical recreation of the early years
of struggle endured
by
Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is considered by many to be the
most successful portrayal
of the artistic process ever depicted on film. Munch, crucified
by critics and public
alike in the late nineteenth century, is seen here as a young
man in battle with puritanical
Norwegian society and beset with various family tragedies and
resultant depressions,
all the while wrestling to give expression to his own artistic
voice. Hailed by
Ingmar Bergman as "a work of genius," Watkins’s portrait
speaks not only to a specific
creator and his milieu but to the filmmaker’s own artistic enterprise
and to intricate
issues of contemporary life. .
Friday, December 12 at 7:00
PM
Privilege
dir. Peter Watkins, UK, 1967, 35mm, 103 mins, color
With
Privilege, Watkins merged documentary style with metaphor
to expand his
investigation
of media and politics. The story concerns Steven Shorter, a
successful pop singer
who is convinced by the government to perform violent theatrical
rock that will distract
youth from politics and social problems and lull them into a
"fruitful conformity" with
church and state. When Shorter withdraws after realizing he's
being manipulated to control
the public, his fans turn against him and he becomes an enemy
of the state.
Saturday,
December 13 at 7:00 PM
Punishment
Park
dir. Peter Watkins, USA, 1971, 16mm, 88 mins, color
Watkins’
study of social turmoil in the United States during the Vietnam
era finds the
Nixon administration establishing detention camps to curb protests
from pacifists, students,
black militants, and other disruptive elements of society. Invoking
powers contained
in the 1950 McCarran Act, the government offers convicted offenders
the chance
to avoid lengthy prison sentences with the option of a three-day
stay in a Punishment
Park , where prisoners must trek fifty-three miles across the
California desert with
no food or water while being chased by armed National Guardsmen
authorized to
shoot them on sight. The film was wholly improvised on location
by the actors – nonprofessionals
who actually held the political views they express in
the
film.
Preceded by:
The
War Game
dir. Peter Watkins,
UK, 1966, 16mm, 47 mins, b/w
In
this highly controversial dramatization of the aftereffects
of a nuclear attack on England , Watkins claims to have used
“mathematical logic” to estimate the likely experience – both
logistic and personal – of nuclear war. The War Game interrogates
the clash between subjective and objective forms and refuses
to allow the viewer a safe distance from the issues it presents.
Sunday,
December 14 at 1:00 PM
La
Commune
dir. Peter Watkins, France, 2001, Beta SP, 343 mins, b/w,
French w/ English subtitles
Philadelphia
Premiere!
 In
March 1871, civil war rages in Paris. A journalist on Versailles
TV issues a soothing, truncated report on the events that are
tearing apart the French Republic, while a community access
channel is set up by the insurgents. Inside a theater, some
220 actors, predominantly amateurs, impersonate the workers
of the Popincourt quarter of the 11th Arrondissement and reenact
the social and political debates that racked the
Paris Commune. Based on a thorough historical research, Watkins'
approach is to make its representation coincide with reflection
on it, to film, together with the reenactment, the idea – what
history means for us today.
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