Peter Watkins’s Punishment Park: Faux doc, real protest
Punishment Park
Virginie Sélavy talks to William Fowler, archive curator at the BFI National Archive, about Peter Watkins’s uncompromising pseudo-documentary Punishment Park (1971) in relation to the rest of his work, in particular The War Game (1965), the influence of the 1969 Chicago Seven trial and the 1970 Kent State Shootings on the film, the improvisatory techniques used and the critique of the media’s pretension to present ‘objective truth’.
Punishment Park is available on Dual Format in the UK from Eureka Entertainment.
First broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 on Friday 20 January.
