Apologies for the rather large file attached to the first issue of this story...The press release follows...The attachment is a low-res still from the film...

[ See www.punishmentpark.co.uk (from April 1st) ]


Suppressed for 35 years, the only truly must-see film of 2005 is as frightening and relevant now as when originally released in 1970.


CULT! FILM DISTRIBUTION IS PROUD TO PRESENT :
PUNISHMENT PARK – 35th Anniversary Cinema Re-release

“The rigorous way in which Watkins has worked this out is extraordinarily believable, and it is impossible to emerge from his 90 minutes of psychodrama unbruised.” [Village Voice]


Synopsis Of Film

In possibly the most contentious of all Peter Watkins’ films, political tensions explode into rage in a futuristic sci-fi desert landscape.
The war in Vietnam is escalating. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency, and activates the 1950 Internal Security Act (the McCarran Act), which authorizes Federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be “a risk to internal security”.

In a desert zone in southwestern California, not far from the tents where a civilian tribunal are passing sentence on Group 638, Group 637 (mostly conscientious objectors and radicals) find themselves in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park. They must quickly discover the rules of the ‘game’ they have been forced to undergo as part of the alternative they have chosen to confinement in a penitentiary.

Group 637 have been promised liberty if they evade pursuing law enforcement officers and, in scorching temperatures, reach the American flag posted 53 miles away across the mountains, within three days. In the tribunal tent, Group 638 - assumed guilty before tried - endeavour in vain to argue their case for resisting the war in Vietnam. Meanwhile tensions between Group 637 and the pursuing law enforcement officers explode into rage and violence in Punishment Park.

Stunningly shot in a seamless documentary style by regular Nick Broomfield cinematographer Joan Churchill, Punishment Park is a unique pseudo-documentary, political sci-fi thriller. On a cinematic level the film has lost none of its ability to shock, engage and disorientate. Utterly compelling on a narrative level, it now seems frighteningly relevant once again in the advent of The Patriot Act, the incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the polarisation of political viewpoints in the USA.
“It’s a stark, uncompromising, brilliant film….an important cinematic statement which ought to be widely shown. It will not be; see it now.” [The Scotsman]
“It is a devastating indictment, a paralyzing drama and a chilling prognosis…Through the sounds ... the cutting, the photography, the acting ... Watkins has created a profoundly disturbing motion picture.” [San Francisco Chronicle]




Filmmaker’s Background
Peter Watkins has consistently produced unique, challenging films for the last 40 years. He burst to public attention in 1964 when his BBC-produced film The War Game was considered too powerful to be aired on television and was banned. The power of Watkins’ work overall can be gauged by the fact that it was 20 years before the BBC felt safe in broadcasting The War Game.
Watkins subsequent work has remained largely suppressed or ignored. This despite the fact that his command of technique has grown exponentially from film to film. Immediately after Punishment Park Watkins’ shot a biopic of the painter Edvard Munch in Scandinavia. This work, entitled Edvard Munch, was described as “a work of genius” by Ingmar Bergman and was favourably compared to Citizen Kane by The Guardian : “on many levels more adventurous and more innovative in its narrative techniques.”

In the last 25 years Peter Watkins has continued to produce extraordinary, highly challenging work. This period has seen the release of The Peace Game (a 14-hour world peace film) and The Freethinker (a complex meditation on Strindberg). For Watkins most recent film to date, La Commune (2000) he persuaded more than 200 non-professionals in Paris to work with him on his epic five-and-a-half-hour reconstruction of the 1871 Commune uprising. Scott MacDonald comments: "the widespread evasion of Peter Watkins is one of the embarrassments of contemporary film criticism."


Having It All Ways
What is totally unique about Punishment Park is the fact that it successfully functions on so many levels. It is a film immediately attractive to the left-wing, positing as it does America as an insane, divided superpower, spiralling out of control. On a political level it is simply one of the most incendiary documents of radicalism ever made. Yet the film is also compelling in narrative terms, maintaining an iron grip throughout. Peter Watkins’ command of technique makes it is impossible not to be drawn into the action and the dystopian world which he has so vividly imagined. Superbly shot in a cinema verite documentary style the film functions as pseudo-documentary, sci-fi thriller and action film. Watkins’ grand achievement is to pull all these elements together into a completely cohesive, hugely satisfying whole.
When the film screened as a part of the Cult! Festival in Edinburgh, Punishment Park received a lengthy standing ovation. It was also the film to which most journalists covering the festival were immediately drawn.
MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON PETER WATKINS AND HIS FILMS AT :
 http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins


Critical Response To Punishment Park

The following quotes are from recent reviews of the film…

“A rebel and a filmmaker whose brilliance and original vision guarantee him to remain unique in the history of film, Watkins is catching everybody. In 1971, it was frightening. Today it still is.” [Le Nouvel Observateur]

“A film that could scarcely be more timely...” [Melbourne Underground Film Festival (2004)]

“…some would argue that Watkins' nightmarish vision has moved even closer to becoming reality.” [DVD Times]
“…a remarkably prescient Big Brother/Guantanamo Bay fusion, passionately and dramatically made.” [Metro]

The following quotes relate to the extremely brief UK cinema release in the early 1970s…
“Peter Watkins’ film is a cinema verite masterpiece of technique. Utilizing non-professional actors, only one camera, and an almost totally improvised script, he’s come up with one of the finest films about dissension in America.” [Rolling Stone, who voted the film one of the ten best of 1970]

“It is a devastating indictment, a paralyzing drama and a chilling prognosis. It is unquestionably a polemic but I’m not at all sure that it is loaded ... Through the sounds ... the cutting, the photography, the acting ... Watkins has created a profoundly disturbing motion picture.” [San Francisco Chronicle]

“The exact reasons for its strength are hard to pin down, but I think it works even for people quite out of sympathy with what it is saying or implying. In short, hypnotically gripping.” [Punch]

“Peter Watkins ... has gone to Southern California for his fierce and frightening new film ... A few years ago we might have dismissed the film as the figment of a crazed imagination. Today its documentary overtones are all too horribly real.” [Daily Mail]

“... I welcome unreservedly Peter Watkins’ bold and imaginative determination to present the most burning and far-reaching issues of today in dynamic screen form.” [Morning Star]

“…it is easily the most subversive film to show for a long time. It is important that we think about it.” [Time Out]


Punishment Park will be presented on newly struck 35mm prints. The release date will be Friday July 15th 2005.