System Critical: The Radical Films of Peter Watkins

‘Making a film is a special act, a political act, a human act of work, love and communication.’
– Peter Watkins

Incisive, insistent, indomitable: the British filmmaker Peter Watkins was all of these. After the BBC, acting on direct instructions from the British government, banned his devastating nuclear-war docudrama The War Game from televisions worldwide (the ban lasted for over twenty years), Watkins spent decades battling to make films that challenged institutions and audiences. Radical in form yet profoundly humanist in spirit, his work unwaveringly rejected passive spectatorship and insisted on active engagement. Again and again, Watkins’ films exposed the violence embedded in political power and the media.

Developed in close consultation with Watkins himself, before his death last October aged 90, this major season offers a rare immersion into nearly 50 years of visionary filmmaking – and a celebration of work whose prescient warnings remain all-too-urgently relevant.

William Fowler and James Bell, season curators

With thanks to

Patrick and Gerard Watkins, Gareth Evans, Leo Goldsmith, Nina Gosling, Sarah Gosling, Oliver Groom, Stephen Mercer and Kris Woods.

The War Game + Samira Ahmed remembers Peter Watkins in an extended conversation with Kevin Brownlow, Kodwo Eshun and Kristofer Woods

The BBC banned Peter Watkins’ notorious films about a future nuclear attack, and yet in 1966 it won an Oscar – for best documentary.

The War Game + intro by season co-curator William Fowler

The BBC banned Peter Watkins’ notorious films about a future nuclear attack, and yet in 1966 it won an Oscar – for best documentary.

Peter Watkins: Resistance Isn’t Futile

In this illustrated introductory lecture, season curators William Fowler and James Bell will explore Peter Watkins’ life and work.

Radical Cinema: Past, Present and Future Histories + Onyeka Igwe in conversation with William Fowler

Join us for experimental films and an extended conversation about Peter Watkins’ signature approach to cinema: restaging past events in the present and framing speculative futures as documentary.

Battle Re-enactments

Part re-enactment, part sympathetic magic: the early films of Peter Watkins, screening alongside complementary works.

Peter Watkins and the Playcraft Film Unit

Long-thought-lost film The Web, along with other films, illustrate the power of Peter Watkins’ early vision in addressing conflict and revolution through collaboration with amateur actors.

Culloden

Peter Watkins revolutionised the historical drama with this harrowing, fiercely modern account of the Battle of Culloden.

Dream of a World

Made by Peter Watkins collaborator Nicholas Gosling, this provocative speculative fiction docudrama restages the Vietnam War in the UK.

Warnings from the Future

Embracing new technological developments and leaning into sci-fi, Watkins presents future events as fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Punishment Park

Increasingly Peter Watkins’ most cited film, Punishment Park assumes even greater pertinence today, not least in light of the state violence openly practised around the world.

The Trap

Peter Watkins’ sensitivity to drama and individual human experience is vividly illustrated in an end-of-the-millennium story set in a nuclear bunker.

The 70s People

Peter Watkins’ intimate, provocative film explores isolation, communication and the sometimes tragic pressures of modern life.

Evening Land

One of Peter Watkins’ most neglected works delivers an unsettlingly plausible vision of political crisis in modern Europe.

Mainstream Interventions

Watkins embraces the new, interventionist possibilities and increased reach of cinema.

Privilege

Peter Watkins’ biting pop satire foresaw the manipulation of celebrity as a tool of mass control.

The Gladiators

Bruised by the hysteria surrounding The War Game, as the swinging decade drew to its entrenched, pessimistic conclusion, Peter Watkins took aim at the entire media system with this fake reality TV show.

Psychological Portraits

The personal and political intertwine across a series of portrait films about troubled, historical figures whose inner and outer worlds are probed.

Edvard Munch

In one of his finest films, Peter Watkins brilliantly reinvents the ‘artist biopic’ to create an expansive yet intimate portrait of the youthful Edvard Munch.

The Freethinker

Epic in scope, Peter Watkins’ rarely-screened film is a formally radical exploration of art, politics and the legacy of August Strindberg.

Film As Dialogue and Critique

Watkins’ media critique moves increasingly centre stage in a series of ambitious late works.

The Journey

Now shaping the scope and length of his work with almost no reference to traditional cinematic presentation, Peter Watkins’ richly rewarding film is epic in form but can be experienced in episodes, allowing more space for debate and reflection.

The Media Project

A series of views, prompting conflict and tension, often dividing down gender lines, emerge as Australian media professionals watch their country’s coverage of the 1991 Gulf War.

La Commune

History, politics and media collide in Peter Watkins’ magnificent final film, an engrossing reimagining of the Paris Commune.

The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins

A fascinating and illuminating overview of Watkins’ radical theories and uncompromising approach to cinema.