2001 interview with Peter Watkins
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2024
- In this 2001 interview (sourced from the rare French DVD release of Watkins' film 'La Commune, Paris 1871'), Watkins (the director of 'The War Game' and 'Culloden') discusses some of the problems with the contemporary media landscape, including the ways in which it renders its audience passive and its reliance on what Watkins calls 'the monoform', a set of artificially-enforced conventions that create texts which allow an audience little to no space for independent critical thought. Watkins also touches on his concept of the Universal Clock.
More discussion of these topics can be found at Watkins' own website: www.mnsi.net/~p...
This interview has been edited down from 40 minutes to approximately 20 minutes, for teaching purposes.
This guy may yet be the most important filmmaker alive, and sadly, the least well known.
Jonathan Rosenbaum once referred to him as "cinema's conscience". I think that sums him up perfectly.
I love this guy’s work. The War Game is one of my favorite movies.
Same
A great and sadly overlooked filmmaker.
100% !!!
What a thoughtful man. Old School English!
I still find the war game terrifying, can you imagine what the 60s test screening thought
Sadly we didnt get to see it until the 80s as it was banned for 20 years
I didn't know it was banned. Wow.
That all of you watch this man's incredible work is what I wish
You cant help watching this, in a post covid era and reflect that Peter Watkins has always understood how globalization and the media machine are so intrinsically linked
He's a true visionary in that respect. He's been sounding the alarm for the best part of 60 years. If only we'd listened.
Thank you for posting this. Very timely then and now
PUNISHMENT PARK - a masterpiece.
Gosh I would love to hear him speak of the nightmare happening in 2022!!!
My Dad nicked a couple of Smoke Bombs of this guys set, when he was in one of his Films😂
Seriously though, I love Peter Watkins, and as far as I know, he coined the term Monoform Media, which really should have cought on.
Really respect him
I'm in agreement. Films and T.V. have gone to pot. Most new films are sentimental sludge, made to a very boring formula. Unless you look out for Sundance Festival films, which I try to. They're all about making money, little else. Television has become so dreadful that it's rarely worth turning on. That too, is all about making stuff that appeals to the greatest number for the least amount of money possible. For some time now, the arts have been considered an "industry", and I think that goes across the board. It shouldn't be about bloody money.
I read that the war game was the last straw for the uk gov at the time, it was banned and he had to move from the uk
I read it on the internet in a interview years ago
Wow!
Not quite. The BBC got cold feet about showing the film and broke their own charter by referring it to Whitehall who objected to its criticism of the UK's civil defence strategy. When they banned it, the BBC put out a statement saying the film was an artistic failure and denied there was any government pressure involved. Watkins lobbied for the film to be released theatrically and the BBC reluctantly agreed, which led to it being submitted to film festivals and eventually winning the Oscar for best documentary film in 1966. Meanwhile, Watkins had left the BBC but struggled to get a foothold in the film industry. When his first feature-length film Privilege crashed and burned at the UK box office, largely as a result of poor press reaction due to Watkins' reputation as a firebrand, he decamped to Sweden where he shot The Gladiators (a thematic sequel to The War Game). He's moved around a few times since then (the US, Norway, Denmark, Romania, France), and most of his subsequent work has been made almost entirely outside the film industry.
At one point he mentions the monoform in relation to radio. I wondered how that worked given that rapid cutting, camera movement etc. would seem to be visual devices for TV and film.
Maybe the equivalent is instead using radio for longer discussions on a range of subjects, playing of different types of music and so on, it's about fast audio edits, bombardment of adverts, limited types of music and so on?
We today see something beautiful in the Yellow West movement, where young and old are protesting globalization indifferent to their prior ideological alignment or lack thereof. A moment of clarity was also achieved in Greece when a right wing party and a left wing party joined forces to form a coalition against austerity. Sadly that moment was squandered and so seems to be the case with the Yellow West movement. I wonder if these things will ever be more than a spark.
Are they the last squirms of a dying organism which was the diverse humanity being replaced by the monotomy of global culture and economy or are they the seedlings of the coming revolt against the post-modern world?
I wonder if I will live long enough to find out.
Concerning the use of audio-visual media there was an interesting example of it during the previous protests in France, before the Yellow Wests, I belive during the protests against the change of the labour law. The activists had their own TV channel which they broadcast locally using analog and digital means, interviewing people much like in the film The Commune. Something similar happened during the occupy movement. But again, just sparks, nothing lasting.
When i first saw the the mono form tv style i could not watch tv so stopped until it calmed down
Its slowed now i think
Is there anywhere one can view the full un-edited interview?
interesting interview from 15 YEARS AGO
yes modern films and media do have LOTS of fast cuts in their programmes and films.
But we as viewers at HOME can PAUSE, we can REWIND stop and dissect these fast choppy films and tv shows- IF we the audience want to?
BUT you can NOT pause and rewind at the cinema :)
keep sharing
You're missing the point. It's not just the organisation of images and sounds that's the problem but the selection. Watch a TV news report or an equivalent video on social media, count the edits, observe the focus of the story, consider how much time (if any) is given to opposing viewpoints within the piece, use of music, narration, etc and ask yourself a) what's being sold to you, and b) how it's being sold. Do you - or any of us - always take the time to pause and rewind, or do we often just accept what's being fed to us?
read D&G