PETER WATKINS: FAUX DOCUMENTARY PIONEER
More popular now than ever in fictional feature films and television, the pseudo-documentary or “found footage” format is primarily used today to make sometimes fantastic subjects and stories seem more real to an audience. The innovative work of faux documentary pioneer Peter Watkins achieves this sense of intimacy and immediacy, and, at the same time, manages to critique contemporary journalistic filmmaking. In March, we will screen two recently struck 35mm prints of Peter Watkins' most celebrated films, the counterculture classic Punishment Park and the deliberately anachronistic biopic, Edvard Munch.
- Fri., Mar. 1 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
In one of the most provocative films of the Vietnam War era, draft dodgers and other counterculture types are rounded up, placed before military tribunal, and hunted down by the National Guard. “A dystopian critique intended for the peace-movement years but possibly even more relevant today... might be the most radioactive portrait of American divisiveness and oppression ever made.” (Michael Atkinson, Village Voice) (MK)
- Fri., Mar. 8 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Visionary filmmaker Watkins takes us into the life and times of one of history’s great artists, the creator of the once-reviled-now-iconic painting ‘The Scream’. Munch (1863-1944) is today recognized, along with Van Gogh, as one of the first true expressionists. Watkins’ most audacious move is a series of anachronistic, direct camera ‘interviews’ with the actors portraying Munch and his contemporaries – a device that takes this film out of the realm of the typical bio-pic and transforms it into a sociological epic. Often shown in shoddy, inferior copies, this 35mm restoration was supervised by the director himself.