Peter Watkins

April 25 to May 4, 2007

British filmmaker Peter Watkins may well be one of the few true visionaries of the moving pictures. His provocative, politically insightful and radically independent work has suffered marginalization for decades, but it has gained renewed appreciation during the last years.

The case of The War Game (1965), a grim and unforgiving (if hypothetical) reconstruction of a nuclear attack on England, is emblematic: The BBC, who had commissioned the film, put a 20 year ban on it even as it went on to win an Academy Award as best documentary film (although scripted, staged and acted) in 1967.

Watkins regularly presents his fictions in “documentary” style, which enhances the immediacy of his social dystopias (i.e. Punishment Park, 1971, an alarming vision of a future USA after the abolition of civil rights), or of his multilayered studies of the artist within his time (like the masterpiece Edvard Munch, 1973-76).

Watkins’ method of “direct cinema” is also a means of intellectual challenge; he does not only question social power structures but also the mass media system. He offers a fascinating and gripping Antithesis or solution to what he terms the “Monoform”, the monopolized and standardized aesthetics of the mass media which are used to entrap the maximum possible number of consumers. (Watkins’ ideas on „Media Crisis“ can be found on www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/index.htm).

Recently, Watkins’ work has become more of a collective effort: His epic The Journey (1983-87), made with many participants around the globe, deals with the uncertainty of life under the ongoing threat of the nuclear race. La Commune (2000) is a film about the Paris Commune in 1871, but it also relates the collective experiences of those involved in the filmmaking process. Watkins’ work is a practical form of resistance; it represents the Utopian effort to continuously expand the „combat zone“.

The Peter Watkins program is co-presented with the Vienna film group kinoki. It is accompanied by discussions and public talks with Watkins’ son Patrick and performers of La Commune. On April 27, a related exhibit opens at Martin Janda Gallery: On Peter Watkins, a curated show of work by international artists who were directly inspired by Watkins’ films.