WATKINS, Peter

(1935-)

   UK tv and film director. Educated at Cambridge, PW worked in documentary films from 1959. He made a reputation with two quasidocumentaries for BBC TV, Culloden (1964) and The WAR GAME (1965). He was one of the pioneers of the technique of staging historical or imaginary events as if they were contemporary and undergoing tv-news coverage. The WAR GAME (1965) adopted a cinema-verite manner to simulate the likely consequences of nuclear attack on the UK, and did this horrifyingly enough for the film to be denied a screening on tv, for which it was made, until 1985; it was successful when released in the CINEMA. His next film, PRIVILEGE (1966), has a pop star used as a puppet by afuture government in a cunning propaganda plan for the manipulation of the nation's youth. GLADIATORERNA (1968; vt The Peace Game), made in Sweden, and PUNISHMENT PARK (1971) are both set in the future, and both use stories of channelled violence to argue a pacifist case, the latter more plausibly. An interesting paradox is that, while his theme is normally the use of mind control by future governments to channel the aggressive instincts of the people, and his purpose is to generate moral indignation at this cynical curtailment of our freedom, his own work equally uses the illusion of fact to present a propaganda fiction. Whether knowingly or not, he is fighting fire with fire. After its initial success, PW's work has been treated less kindly by critics, who do not doubt his sincerity but deprecate his methods; it is felt by some that he has thumped the same tub for too long.

   PN