Punishment Park trailer

[Keith Millea]

Here is the video trailer(1:41) for the film "Punishment Park".I pulled the description from ebay,where it can be bought.Scary stuff for all you "dissident voices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suh2r2ojP...lpage#t=4s



Shot in a documentary style, PUNISHMENT PARK appeared in 1971 and tackled some pertinent issues of the day. The film is shot from the point of view of a TV news crew who have been hired to cover a bizarre "game" taking place between a group of soldiers and various imprisoned antiestablishment figures. The unwashed hippies and outcasts are ushered across a barren desert by the soldiers, who promise to release them when their destination--an American flag that lies 90 miles away--is reached. But the intense heat and increasingly aggressive attitudes of the soldiers lead to some violent confrontations, and the rumors that continue to dog PUNISHMENT PARK suggest that some of these skirmishes weren't scripted or acted out--these were real emotions that uncontrollably spilled into the actors' characters as they grappled with the difficult conditions. PUNISHMENT PARK resembles the controversial Stanford prison experiment, which was also conducted in 1971. Researchers at Stanford University asked volunteers to take the roles of guards and prisoners in an artificial prison environment so they could study their behavior; things quickly spiraled out of control and the experiment was terminated. PUNISHMENT PARK doesn't end prematurely but plays itself out, and the result is a powerful piece of work that lingers long in the memory, although it's sometimes frighteningly easy to forget that it isn't a documentary. Previous versions of director Peter Watkins's (THE WAR GAME) film have either been banned or heavily censored in the U.S., but this release is the full, unexpurgated version.

[Keith Millea]

Another clip(2:26) from Punishment park.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_WR7SiC...re=related

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - thank you for starting this thread and posting the links.

Even heavily compressed on bits and bytes Tube, some of the images retain an archeypal clarity.

Watkins' work is clearly a danger to Power, subverting Authority.

So, They suppressed it.

For cross reference purposes in future, also see the thread below:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=4111

[Paul Rigby]

Keith - thank you for starting this thread and posting the links.

Even heavily compressed on bits and bytes Tube, some of the images retain an archeypal clarity.

Watkins' work is clearly a danger to Power, subverting Authority.

So, They suppressed it.

For cross reference purposes in future, also see the thread below:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=4111

I'm all for giving "They" a name; the BBC, in the case of The War Game:

it was banned for 25 years by the BBC amid storms of controversy which were reopened when it finally made British TV screens in a Channel 4 season of banned titles.

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?ent...atkinspete

The BBC - enemy of free speech, bootlicking servant of power.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - thank you for starting this thread and posting the links.

Even heavily compressed on bits and bytes Tube, some of the images retain an archeypal clarity.

Watkins' work is clearly a danger to Power, subverting Authority.

So, They suppressed it.

For cross reference purposes in future, also see the thread below:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=4111

I'm all for giving "They" a name; the BBC, in the case of The War Game:

it was banned for 25 years by the BBC amid storms of controversy which were reopened when it finally made British TV screens in a Channel 4 season of banned titles.

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?ent...atkinspete

The BBC - enemy of free speech, bootlicking servant of power.

Paul - if you'd bothered reading, rather than indulging your obsessions, you'd have seen this already posted:

This brought back memories from the early 70s when I watched one of the most frightening movies I've ever watched.A film by Peter Watkins titled "Punishment Park".It was so controversial that it was only shown on some collage campuses at the time.The plot being America in a full blown police state,with dissidents being tried in court,and given the choice of long prison sentences or a "run to freedom" in the California desert.Those who chose the desert were hunted down by California cops.It was absolutley chilling.I have never heard anything more about this film,and thought it was probably supressed.I just did a search,and found out that it has been released on DVD recently.Below is a link that gives a review of this movie.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews...review.htm

:afraid:

Peter Watkins is a very important filmmaker who was silenced.

He made The War Game, a very powerful anti-nuclear war film for the BBC in 1965, and it was judged way too subversive and suppressed by a combination of BBC management and the British government.

Here is Peter Watkins on those shameful, but entirely predictable, events:

The War Game
U.K.
BBC TV
1965
47 mins
»» Availability »»
Background
BY LATE 1964 Harold Wilson’s newly elected Labour Government had already broken its election manifesto to unilaterally disarm Britain, and was in fact developing a full-scale nuclear weapons programme, in spite of wide-spread public protest. There was a marked reluctance by the British TV at the time to discuss the arms race, and there was especially silence on the effects of nuclear weapons - about which the large majority of the public had absolutely no information. I therefore proposed to the BBC that - using one small corner of Kent in southeastern England to represent a microcosm - I make a film showing the possible effects, during an outbreak of war between NATO and the USSR, of a nuclear strike on Britain.

At that precise moment the BBC was undergoing a power struggle, a ‘night of the long knives’ - someone very senior had been fired, someone else had quit in support, and Huw Wheldon was pushed two notches up the Corporation’s hierarchical ladder to the position of Controller of BBC 2. He was no longer the Head of the Documentary Film Department, and, at the worst possible time, his personal backing was suddenly gone. The BBC read the script of ‘The War Game’, reluctantly agreed to give me a budget, but warned that the film might not be completed. This warning was a result of the British Home Office (in charge of Civil Defence, into which the government was pouring great amounts of money and propaganda) having telephoned the BBC to inquire why I was making a film on this subject. As part of my research, I had sent a letter to the Home Office inquiring how many hospital beds, etc. the Civil Defence would be able to provide following an all-out nuclear strike on the UK, and this had naturally prompted their query to the BBC.

Filming
The filming took place in early 1965, in the Kent towns of Tonsbridge, Gravesend, Chatham and Dover. Once again the cast was almost entirely made up of amateurs, found via a series of public meetings throughout Kent some months earlier. Much of the filming, including the scenes of the firestorm, was done in a disused military barracks in Dover. The crew included cinematographer Peter Bartlett, sound recordist Derek Williams, make-up artist Lilian Munro, action co-ordinator Derek Ware, set designers Tony Cornell and Anne Davey, costumer Vanessa Clarke, and editor Michael Bradsell. I repeated the “you-are-there” style of newsreel immediacy. My purpose, as in ‘Culloden’, was to involve ‘ordinary people’ in an extended study of their own history - only this time the subject involved potentially imminent events, for the threat of full-scale nuclear war was a very real one at that time. There was, however, an important stylistic difference in this film. Interwoven among scenes of ‘reality’ were stylized interviews with a series of ‘establishment figures’ - an Anglican Bishop, a nuclear strategist, etc. The outrageous statements by some of these people (including the Bishop) - in favour of nuclear weapons, even nuclear war - were actually based on genuine quotations. Other interviews with a doctor, a psychiatrist, etc. were more sobre, and gave details of the effects of nuclear weapons on the human body and mind. In this film I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced ‘reality’. My question was - “Where is ‘reality’? ... in the madness of statements by these artificially-lit establishment figures quoting the official doctrine of the day, or in the madness of the staged and fictional scenes from the rest of my film, which presented the consequences of their utterances?”- and to that end I consistently inter-cut said interviews. Obviously beyond and above the question of form was my concern to use the film to help people break the silence in the media on the nuclear arms race.

Banning
The BBC panicked when they first saw the film, and sought government consultation re showing it. They subsequently denied this, but the sad fact remains that the BBC violated their own Charter of Independence, and on September 24, 1965, secretly showed ‘The War Game’ to senior members of the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office (in charge of telecommunications), a representative of the Military Chiefs of Staff, and Sir Burke Trend, Secretary to Harold Wilson’s Cabinet. Approximately six weeks later, the BBC announced that they were not going to broadcast the film on TV - and denied that their decision had anything to do with the secret screening to the government. To this day, the BBC formally deny that the banning of ‘The War Game’ was due to pressure by the government, but a review of now available documents reveals that there was (is) much more to this affair than was admitted publicly.

Marginalization
What is even less known publicly, are the measures the BBC then took to marginalize me as a filmmaker, both within and outside my profession. At the height of the scandal, with questions being asked in Parliament re whether the Government had in fact pressured the independent TV company, many of the public wrote to the BBC asking them to show the film. In December 1965, two days before Christmas, the BBC took the unprecedented step of publishing an open letter to the public, the first paragraph of which implied that ‘The War Game’ had been banned as an artistic failure! Their exact - and very sneaky words - were as follows: “There was an element of experiment in this project, as in much broadcast production. Such programme experiments sometimes fail and have to be put on one side at some stage in production, even though money has been spent on them. They are, nevertheless, a necessary part of the development of broadcasting, and such failures as may occur are the price we must expect to pay if new forms and subjects are to be brought within the compass of television.” (The startling hypocrisy of this statement was highlighted by the BBC’s eagerness a few months later to collect the Academy Award for Best Documentary - for ‘The War Game’.)

At about the same time, the BBC further attempted to deliberately blacken my name: the BBC evening news announced that I had deliberately used trip wires hidden in the heather to make my actors fall during the filming of ‘Culloden’ [!!] I believe that the context was that of an accusation by ‘Equity’, the British actors’ union (who were angry that I had used non-professional actors). This accusation was stated in solemn tones by the BBC news reader, in the midst of other world-news items. There was no attempt by the BBC itself to refute this accusation. I immediately called the newsroom, and asked if they had verified these facts by checking with the cast in Scotland? There was dead silence. I then told the senior news producer that if the BBC did not immediately retract this lie, I would come down the following day and dismantle the TV Centre, brick by brick. The BBC announced a retraction the following evening.

These episodes expose the primitive and almost desperate extent to which TV organizations will go to defend their hierarchical power regarding what the public sees. Specifically - including in respect to what later happened with ‘Edvard Munch’ and ‘La Commune’ - the usage of the rationale of ‘artistic failure’, which TV organizations are fully prepared to use in order to suppress or marginalize films which they do not want the public to see. This has been a recurring motif in the suppression of my own work. In the words of one senior official who was explaining to me in the autumn of 1965 how difficult it was for the BBC to show ‘The War Game’: “Let’s face it, Peter, your film is less than a masterpiece ...” - the identical ‘logic’ used by La Sept ARTE in France, to suppress ‘La Commune’ in 2000.

Following their decision to ban ‘The War Game’, and despite - or perhaps because of - growing public outcry, the BBC organized a series of private screenings at the British Film Institute’s National Film Theatre during a week in February, 1966. Invited to see the film were carefully selected representatives of the British Establishment, members of the armed forces and Civil Defence, parliamentarians, and defence and military affairs correspondents; film journalists were not allowed into the cinema. Also not allowed were the public, who were denied entry by a phalanx of BBC security guards standing elbow to elbow in a long line in front of the cinema. The BBC undoubtedly hoped to use these unabashedly elitist screenings in order to consolidate its decision to ban ‘The War Game’, by gaining the approval of its colleagues in the Establishment. Evidently this they did - even among sufficient numbers of the press. Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, subsequently rejected a request by Mrs. Renee Short (Labour Member of Parliament), that the BBC should arrange a public screening of the film, on the grounds that the weight of press opinion was against the public showing of ‘The War Game’. I also read a letter from Hugh Greene (which I presumably should not have seen) confirming that their intention was to banish the film to a vault after the screenings at the NFT; I recall a phrase to the effect that, “we will have fulfilled our obligation to show the film”.

Reaction
The role of the British press in this affair was very mixed, with military and defence journalists condemning ‘The War Game’ for its ‘ban-the-Bomb propaganda’, and a number of film and TV journalists stating that the film should be shown. Some journalists wrote that the film should be seen as widely as possible, others that it should be seen only in controlled circumstances such as private film societies, and others that it should be suppressed altogether. Overall, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene was right about the weight of press opinion: The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Sun and London evening papers all supported the ban, and although the Sunday papers brought the percentage in favour of the BBC down, the clear majority of the mainstream press were for suppressing ‘The War Game’.

‘YES, THE BBC ARE RIGHT TO BAN THIS .... the only possible effect of showing it to the British public at large would be ... to raise more unilateral disarmament recruits.’ (Defence Correspondent, Evening News)

‘BRILLIANT. BUT IT MUST STAY BANNED. It is a brilliant film, a brutal film. But I would never let any son of mine see it ... I object to this film because it is propagandistic and negative in its approach, politically calculated in its effect. What producer Peter Watkins has made here is not a film about The Bomb, but a plea to ban it ... It excluded hope. In that I judge it to be irresponsible. It excluded any reasoned argument on why we must have The Bomb. The powers-that-be have the right to censor ‘The War Game’, for it is a game to be played seriously and responsibly. It is better left to the powers-that-be than to Mr. Peter Watkins.’ (Daily Sketch)

‘WHAT DOES IT REALLY ACHIEVE? It is hard to argue with Mr. Watkins’ appalling predictions. Nobody can accuse him of exaggerating the effects of nuclear war. Nuclear war cannot be exaggerated. Perhaps he cannot even be accused of hysteria. Nuclear war may entitle him to hysteria. But throughout ‘The War Game’ there is not a glimmer of human resilience. And humans are incredibly, wonderfully resilient ... All ‘The War Game’ has to offer is a screen of protest and blame. Not an opportunity is missed for a sneer at the Civil Defence or the Church.’ (The Sun)

‘MUDDLE-MINDED MR. WATKINS. This monstrous misrepresentation so accurately mirrors the claims of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that it is a mystery how the BBC was induced to put up 10,000 pounds to make the film, which could more accurately be called ‘The C.N.D. Game.’ (Daily Express)

‘ONE BAN THE BBC NEED NOT HAVE DEFENDED ... the real horror is the stark documentary quality of the film. It reproduces with sickening realism charred limbs, crushed faces and eyes melting in their sockets. This, as the BBC rightly decided, could not have been borne by the millions of viewers sitting at home.’ (Daily Mirror)

‘The film is the most sickening in the world today and one the public should never see.’ (Manchester Evening News)

‘The BBC is failing in its duty in keeping it from the public ... packed with things people have forgotten or not bothered to read.’ (Leicester Mercury)

‘Shocking ... leaves the impression of sadness and madness.’ (Oxford Mail)

‘Horrifying, but so also would be a nuclear war.’ (Evening Mail, Birmingham)

‘THIS FILM MUST BE SHOWN ... No wonder the Establishment wants to stop the film being widely shown. If several million people saw it, the campaign for the banning of nuclear weapons would receive an enormous impetus.’ (The Daily Worker)

‘A WARNING MASTERPIECE. It may be the most important film ever made. We are always being told that works of art cannot change the course of history. Given wide enough discrimination, I believe this one might ...‘The War Game’ stirred me at a level deeper than panic or grief ... It precisely communicates one man’s vision of disaster, and I cannot think that it is diminished as art because the vision happens to correspond with the facts. Like Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgement’, it proposes itself as an authentic documentary image of the wrath to come - though Michelangelo was working from data less capable of verification.’ (Film and theatre critic, The Observer)


top

Availability

Culloden’ (1964) and ‘The War Game’ (1965), were both produced for the BBC, who still retain the rights. Although both films have been available for some years on DVD, until fairly recently it has been difficult to obtain these films for theatrical screenings. This was - and partly remains - related to restrictions imposed by the British Actors' union, Equity on the use of amateur actors, which has always caused difficulties for the release of my BBC work. This situation is becoming a little more flexible, and the BBC is now open to allowing the films to be screened theatrically under certain circumstances.

France
'Culloden' (La Bataille du Culloden’) and 'The War Game' (La Bombe') are available on DVD and non-theatrical release from Doriane Films in Paris. These versions are in the original English with French subtitles. Please contact:

Cécile Farkas,
Doriane Films,
1, rue du Sergent Bauchat,
75012, Paris
France

Tel: (+33) 1 44 74 77 11
Fax: (+33) 1 44 74 64 93

doriane@doriane-films.com
http://www.doriane-films.com

As noted in the section LATEST NEWS on the Home Page of this site, the French distributor SHELLAC is negotiating with the BBC for the cinema rights to these films in France. Please contact:

Thomas Ordonneau,
Shellac,
40 rue de Paradis,
75010 Paris,
France

(+33) 1 42 55 07 84

shellac@altern.org
http://www.shellac-altern.org

The rest of Europe including the U.K.
To discuss a theatrical screening license for 'Culloden' or 'The War Game' please contact:


Vicky Mitchell
vicky.mitchell@bbc.co.uk.
For other rights queries regarding theatrical public screenings of 'Culloden' and 'The War Game' in Europe, contact:

Molly Hope,
BBC WorldWide,
Room E148, Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 OTT,
England

Tel: +44 (0)20 8433 2330
Fax: +44 (0)20 8433 3607

molly.hope@bbc.co.uk
The original film material of ‘The War Game’ and ‘Culloden’ is stored in the archives at the British Film Institute in London. These films are much in need of restoration, especially where it concerns striking new prints of ‘Culloden’. In fact, I doubt that there are any usable 16mm copies of ‘Culloden’ remaining, though perhaps a few prints of ‘The War Game’ have survived.

For information on the availability of film copies, please contact:

Fleur Buckley,
Archival Bookings,
British Film Institute

Tel: +44 (020) 7957 4709
Fax: +44 (020) 7580 5830

Fleur.Buckley@bfi.org.uk
For information relating to the archival material at the BFI, please contact:

Katrina Stokes or Sonia Mullett,
Donor Access,
British Film Instite

katrina.stokes@bfi.org.uk
sonia.mullett@bfi.org.uk
North America
Oliver Groom (Project X Distribution) has acquired the DVD and non-theatrical rights from the BBC to ‘Culloden’ and ‘The War Game’ for Canada and the USA.

Oliver Groom,
Project X Distribution Limited,
223 Humberside Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario M6P 1K9
Canada

Tel: (416) 604-2506

oliver@torontobritpics.com
For non-theatrical public screenings in North America (no admission charged and for closed groups such as college campuses, art association memberships), please contact Oliver Groom.

For commercial screenings, please contact BBC Worldwide in New York or Toronto:

BBC Worldwide
747 Third Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10017
U.S.A.

Tel: (212) 705 9300

BBC Worldwide
130 Spadina Avenue, Suite 401
Toronto, Ontario M5V 2L4
Canada

Tel: (416) 362 3223

http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/warGame.htm

[Paul Rigby]

I am delighted to have you confirm the veracity of my catchy little number -

The BBC - enemy of free speech, bootlicking servant of power

- in this thread.

So much for the cod-mystic "They"!

[Jan Klimkowski]

I am delighted to have you confirm the veracity of my catchy little number -

The BBC - enemy of free speech, bootlicking servant of power

- in this thread.

So much for the cod-mystic "They"!

There's no cod in Thomas Pynchon...

[Paul Rigby]

I am delighted to have you confirm the veracity of my catchy little number -

The BBC - enemy of free speech, bootlicking servant of power

- in this thread.

So much for the cod-mystic "They"!

There's no cod in Thomas Pynchon...

But there was something distinctly fishy about that "They." The cynic might even conclude your readers were being offered a "sturgeon of the second freshness," as the old Russian proverb has it.

Happily, I am not a cyrillic cynic.

[Magda Hassan]

I thought the cod wars were over. Iceland won.

[Keith Millea]

Jan,
I appreciate your addition of the cross reference thread.That being said I would like very much for you and Paul to stop mucking up my thread here.Thanks!