Freethinker: The Films and Career of Peter Watkins

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The 'Freethinker' project concerns the films and career of Peter Watkins (born Norbiton, Surrey, 1935-), British-born director of 'The War Game' (1965), 'Culloden' (1964) and 'Edvard Munch' (1973) amongst other productions. In the past, Watkins has been critically neglected, particularly in his native United Kingdom. Yet spurred on by the recent re-release to critical acclaim of many of his films on DVD, he is now being reassessed by a new generation of film analysts and the public. The 'Freethinker' project comprehensively will examine and assess the films and career of Peter Watkins. It will explore why Watkins was so critically neglected and marginalised in the past and why he is now being reassessed. It will analyse what were the reasons for Watkins' initial breakthrough success with the acclaimed BBC TV film, 'Culloden' (1964) that reconstructed the last land battle to be fought on British soil at Culloden moor in 1746. It will ask why his next film, 'The War Game' (1965), about nuclear war, caused a Cold War incident when it was notoriously banned from TV by the BBC for twenty years. (The film, ironically, would go on to win Watkins an Oscar in Hollywood for Best Documentary in 1967). The 'Freethinker' project will trace Watkins' subsequent, less well known, career following his dramatic decision, in 1968, to quit Britain for a self-imposed exile overseas, partly as a result of 'The War Game'; an international 'exile' that still continues to this day. Drawing on a wealth of internationally gathered research materials, including unprecedented access to Watkins' personal archive, interviews with Watkins himself plus a unique invited opportunity to visit his Paris set to observe shooting of Watkins' last film production, 'La Commune (Paris 1871) (2000), the project will for the first time in a UK context comprehensively assess the development of Watkins' later career overseas. Watkins is one of the few British-born directors who can truly lay claim to being international, having made films in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France - in all cases in the native language - as well as the USA, Canada and Australia. In many ways, his career overseas and his corresponding artistic development into a globe-trotting director are more interesting than the early work, 'Culloden' and 'The War Game', for which he is still most known in Britain. 'The Freethinker' project will assess Watkins' place in the history of British cinema and television but also in world cinema. With his meticulous documentary reconstructions of events using non-professional actors, first dating from the early 1960s, Watkins is widely seen as a pioneer of the drama documentary / documentary drama. In many ways, his work anticipates later forms of 'reality TV'. The project will consider the extent of Watkins' influence - for example on filmmakers such as Ken Loach who also later began to use a documentary style within his own films. From mock documentaries to contemporary war films and even the Jason Bourne trilogy in Hollywood, all make use of a handheld documentary style to make their dramatic fictions look more authentic and all therefore owe an influence to the techniques which Watkins pioneered in his films in the 1960s. Thus what are the implications of Watkins' style for understanding documentary itself ? Do Watkins' shooting techniques expose that what makes documentaries seem 'true' is as much a product of the style as the content ? Today, Watkins is more or less retired from filmmaking but he continues to be an ardent critic of the media which he sees as contributing to and exarcebating the wider political and social problems of the world today. The project will assess, finally, Watkins' strong criticisms of the media and together with consideration of the history of his filmmaking career, it will ask what are the wider implications of Watkins' work for an understanding of today's media and its role within society?