Freethinker: The Films and Career of Peter Watkins

《自由思想者》项目涉及彼得·沃特金斯(原名诺比顿，萨里郡，1935-)的电影和职业生涯，他生于英国，曾执导过《战争游戏》(1965)、《卡洛登》(1964)和《爱德华德·蒙克》(1973)等作品。在过去，沃特金斯一直被严重忽视，特别是在他的祖国英国。然而，在最近他的许多电影DVD版重新上映并获得评论界好评的推动下，他现在正受到新一代电影分析师和公众的重新评估。《自由思想者》项目将全面考察和评估彼得·沃特金斯的电影和职业生涯。它将探索为什么沃特金斯在过去被如此严重地忽视和边缘化，以及为什么他现在被重新评估。它将分析沃特金斯凭借广受好评的英国广播公司电视电影《卡洛登》(1964)取得最初突破性成功的原因，这部电影再现了1746年在英国领土上在卡洛登沼泽进行的最后一场陆战。它会问，为什么他的下一部关于核战争的电影《战争游戏》(The War Game，1965)会引发冷战事件，而这部电影却被BBC臭名昭著地禁止在电视上播放了20年。(具有讽刺意味的是，这部电影后来为沃特金斯赢得了1967年好莱坞奥斯卡最佳纪录片奖)。《自由思想者》项目将追溯沃特金斯后来不太为人所知的职业生涯。1968年，沃特金斯做出戏剧性的决定，离开英国，自我流放到海外，部分原因是《战争游戏》，这一国际流亡至今仍在继续。该项目利用了大量国际收集的研究资料，包括史无前例地访问沃特金斯的个人档案、对沃特金斯本人的采访，以及一次独特的受邀参观他在巴黎拍摄的片场，观看沃特金斯的最后一部电影《公社》(巴黎1871)(2000)的拍摄，该项目将首次在英国范围内全面评估沃特金斯后来在海外职业生涯的发展。沃特金斯是为数不多的真正能够声称自己是国际导演的英国出生的导演之一，他曾在瑞典、挪威、丹麦、法国以及美国、加拿大和澳大利亚拍摄过电影-所有电影都是用本国语言拍摄的。在很多方面，他在海外的职业生涯和相应的环球导演艺术发展都比他在英国最出名的早期作品《卡洛登》和《战争游戏》更有趣。《自由思想者》项目将评估沃特金斯在英国电影史和电视史上的地位，以及在世界电影史上的地位。沃特金斯使用非专业演员对事件进行了细致的纪录片重建，第一次可以追溯到20世纪60年代初，他被广泛视为戏剧纪录片/纪录片戏剧的先驱。在很多方面，他的作品都预示着未来形式的“真人秀”。该项目将考虑沃特金斯的影响范围--例如对肯·罗奇等电影制作人的影响，他后来也开始在自己的电影中使用纪录片风格。从模拟纪录片到当代战争片，甚至好莱坞的杰森·伯恩三部曲，都使用了手持纪录片的风格，使他们的戏剧小说看起来更真实，因此都受到了沃特金斯在20世纪60年代电影中开创的技巧的影响。那么，沃特金斯的风格对于理解纪录片本身意味着什么呢？沃特金斯的拍摄技巧是否表明，让纪录片看起来像是真实的东西，既是内容的产物，也是风格的产物？今天，沃特金斯或多或少从电影制作中退休了，但他仍然是媒体的热心批评者，他认为媒体对当今世界更广泛的政治和社会问题做出了贡献，并激化了这些问题。最后，这个项目将评估沃特金斯对媒体的强烈批评，并考虑他的电影制作生涯的历史，它将询问沃特金斯的工作对于理解当今媒体及其在社会中的角色有什么更广泛的影响？

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?