Peter Watkins

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Peter Watkins (born October 29, 1935 in Norbiton , Surrey , United Kingdom ) is a British director , screenwriter and producer who made a name for himself with documentary staged feature films . Since several of his films ( The War Game , Privilege , Gladiatorerna and Strafpark ) are set in the near future, these have also repeatedly been assigned to the science fiction genre.

Career

Watkins first studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , but turned to filmmaking after completing his army service in 1956. He began to make commissioned documentaries and his own short films.

With his first feature-length film, the BBC- produced Culloden (1964), Watkins established a new style by applying the technique of newsreel reports to scenes in which he only used amateur actors . In the style of a television report, he analyzed the Battle of Culloden between English government troops and rebellious Jacobites in 1746. The film was well received by the press.

The same technique was used in Watkin's next docu-drama, The War Game from 1966. Here he combined statistical studies of the possible consequences of a nuclear war on the British Isles with game scenes and fictional interviews with survivors of a nuclear strike. The War Game sparked a public debate over its drastic imagery, and the BBC refused to air the film. He has received a special award at the Venice Film Festival , an Oscar and a British Film Academy Award .

With the help of the US film production company Universal , Watkins shot his only feature film in Great Britain in 1966, Privilege . In the report about a (fictional) rock star who is used by political and religious rulers to conform to the youth, documentary stylistic devices came into play again. The film was a failure: the British critics rejected it as did the audience. Watkins left the UK. His later film activities took him to Scandinavia , the USA and France , where he often took up socio-political issues.

Strafpark (1971) was controversial about a USA in the near future in which political opponents are imprisoned "preventively" and given the choice of serving several years' imprisonment or taking part in a three-day hunt in a "criminal park". Watkins achieved critical success with the Norwegian - Swedish TV miniseries Edvard Munch (1974), a cinematic biography of the painter of the same name , which was also shown in a three-hour version in the cinema. Watkins described Edvard Munch as one of his most personal works.

Watkins struggled all his life with difficulties in showing his films and making them known to a wider audience. Often either the producers kept the films under lock and key ( The War Game , Edvard Munch , The Paris Commune ) or, as in the case of Strafpark , no distributor was found who wanted to exploit the film nationwide.

Peter Watkins lives in Felletin, France.

subjects

With punishment park Watkins began to leave the traditional narrative forms of audiovisual media behind, which he later summarized under the term "monoform". Watkins defined all common film techniques as monoform. For example, fast cuts, emotional use of music and other structuring and controlling means prevented the viewer from reflecting on his reaction (manipulated by the medium) and prevented the viewer from interacting with the medium. For this reason, Watkins also took an active part in building networks in parallel to his films in which people interested in politics and active media work came together, for example in the (unrealized) remake of The War Game in the early 1980s or in Die Pariser Commune (2000). The latter led to the establishment of the collective “Le Rebond”, which accompanies the film's performances with events such as panel discussions.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1964: Culloden
  • 1965: The War Game (alternatively: War Game )
  • 1967: privilege (privilege)
  • 1969: Gladiatorerna
  • 1971: Punishment Park (Punishment Park)
  • 1974: Edvard Munch
  • 1974: The Seventies People
  • 1975: cases
  • 1977: Aftonlandet
  • 1987: Resan ( The Journey , 14½ h)
  • 1994: The Freethinker
  • 2000: The Paris Commune (La Commune (Paris, 1871))

Awards (selection)

Films about Peter Watkins

  • 2001: The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins (Director: Geoff Bowie)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ U. a. in: Phil Hardy (ed.), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia - Science Fiction, Aurum Press, London 1991; Georg Seeßlen: Cinema of the utopian. History and Mythology of Science Fiction Films, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980; Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 1500 films from 1902 until today. Heyne, Munich 1994.
  2. ↑ Alan Rosenthal: The War Game: An Interview with Peter Watkins , in Alan Rosenthal, John Corner (ed.): New Challenges for Documentary , Manchester University Press, 2nd edition, ISBN 0-7190-6898-3 (HC) and 0-7190-6899-7 (TB), Manchester / New York 2005, pp. 110-120.
  3. ^ Joseph A. Gomez: Peter Watkins, Twayne Publishers, Boston 1979, ISBN 978-0805792676 , p. 134.
  4. ^ Peter Watkins website , accessed June 10, 2012.
  5. ↑ Role of American MAVM, Hollywood and the Monoform ( Memento of the original dated August 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from Peter Watkins' website, accessed June 14, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pwatkins.mnsi.net
  6. ^ Scott MacDonald: Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies, Cambridge University Press 1993, p. 172.
  7. ↑ Information on the film The Paris Commune and the collective “Le Rebond” on Peter Watkins' website, accessed on June 19, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Watkins, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British director, screenwriter and producer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Norbiton , Surrey , United Kingdom