Punishment Park (Watkins, 1971): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.50pm
This film, which also screens on August 14th, is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Details here.
Time Out review:
Cult British filmmaker Peter Watkins made the 1971 pseudo-documentary
‘Punishment Park’ as a reaction to the ‘revolutionary’ events in the
United States in the late ’60s, in particular the wave of
anti-Vietnam-fuelled activism, as well as protests against the
suppression of the Black Panther movement and the shooting by the
National Guard of students at Kent State University. Intended as an
analysis and illustration of (US) state terrorism, the film imagines a
futuristic correction facility out in the Mojave desert, where ‘security
risks’ are gathered and sentenced by an unconstitutional court to
potentially fatal punishments involving forced treks, without water,
through the desert. Seen today, the film can be viewed in a number of
ways. Firstly, it’s a prime example of Watkins’ innovative, radical
approach to filmmaking. His use of fictional scenarios to examine actual
political events and practices – here the reactionary tendencies of
the Nixon era – has a hyper-Swiftian effect, whereby artistic
exaggeration highlights the real to an intense degree. Likewise, his
considered use of non-professionals as actors – real National Guardsmen,
draft protesters and black activists – intensifies the emotional
atmosphere, the sense of immediacy and the processes of audience
identification. Interestingly, the improvised outpourings – ‘the US is
as psychotic as it is powerful!’ screams one defandant – now seem very
much like historical documents themselves. Finally, and more
problematically, there’s the question of whether Watkins’ film succeeds
as pure, tensely-structured, drama – will the two groups of dissidents
survive? Will they tear themselves apart in trying to do so? Personally,
I think not. But this is fascinating, gut-wrenching and
thought-provoking filmmaking all the same.
Wally Hammond
Here (and above) is the trailer.
