Peter Watkins – Cinema of the World

Peter Watkins – Fällan AKA The Trap (1975)

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 08:56:00 +0000

Quote:
In the year 1999, totalitarianism prevails with the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. colluding to govern the world by strict rules. Chaos erupts on the surface but state employees live safely underground. A radical and his son, visit his brother John’s family in the bunkers and the discourse grows hot.

1.32GB | 1h 02m | 702×526 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/144543C5D7F39D8/The.Trap.(Peter.Watkins.1975).VHSRip.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/E41E2DEB13DF490/The.Trap.(Peter.Watkins.1975).VHSRip.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/FC5CAF8FAE04466/The.Trap.(Peter.Watkins.1975).VHSRip.part2.rar

Language:Swedish,German,English,Russian
Subtitles:English hardcoded

The post Peter Watkins – Fällan AKA The Trap (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – Culloden (1964)

admin — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 08:59:00 +0000

Quote:
The 1746 Battle of Culloden, the last land battle fought in the British Isles and the battle that ensured that Scotland was controlled by England. Not only do we see the battle unfold but also the lead-up, the key people involved and the aftermath.

Extras:
-Commentary by John Cook
‘Filming “Culloden” on location’ colour footage, taken by an extra on the set (running 7 minutes 45 seconds). It is a silent piece that runs with commentary by Dr John Cook over it.

-Interview with editor Mike Bradsell 2015

1.72GB | 1h 09m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/32F0E27C35981F8/Culloden.(Peter.Watkins.1964).BDRip.576p.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/16CD80605D0AE1F/Filming_’Culloden’_on_location.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/FBD4D9916089597/Interview_with_editor_Mike_Bradsell.2015.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Peter Watkins – Culloden (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – Edvard Munch [TV version] (1974)

admin — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 09:17:00 +0000

Quote:
The entire point of Peter Watkins’s cinematic career, so he seems to indicate in his interview with himself in the liner notes for New Yorker Video’s Edvard Munch DVD, is to directly challenge the perception deadening (at best) and enslaving (at worst) effects of the hegemony of 20th-century media, the conception of which was arguably the arrival of the moving picture. Strangely enough, two of his most acclaimed films take place decades before the Edison’s kinetoscope, but Watkins seems to use the anachronism of creating a hypothetical “first-person cinema” in the B.C. years to accentuate his impassioned appeal for elevated media consciousness. His recent six-hour millennial masterwork La Commune (Paris, 1871) was blunt about it, framing a rag-tag experimental theater ensemble attempting to reenact a moment of French social resistance with televised coverage from within (two community reporters practically serving as the film’s tour guides) and without (daily reports from the State-suckling network distorting the public’s all-but-assigned opinion). It’s undoubtedly the type of marathon movie that admittedly strong-arms you into the sort of masochistic approval that causes you to assert, albeit quizzically, “It really starts to pay off in hour four.” (What was that about the media browbeating its audience again, Peter?) But La Commune‘s slow, academic Bunsen-burn reaches a rolling boil when one of the commune wenches raises her musket barrel directly into the television camera and, thereby, out into the film’s audience like a train arriving at La Ciotat.

His 1974 film Edvard Munch, commissioned (and then, according to Watkins, ceremoniously held hostage) by the Norwegian NRK and Swedish SVT television stations, is neither as slow as La Commune nor does it reach any sort of boil. (Not, at least, in the 1976 theatrical version edited down from the television original’s 210 minutes.) What it offers instead is a jagged portrait of a nearly-mute artist who speaks his sexual frustrations and emo baggage over a thwarted affair with the pseudonymous “Mrs. Heiberg” through his evolving artistry, and then seems nonplussed when the crusty, high society powers-that-be react with outrage, contempt and marginalization, as though Munch actually used the brackish, tubercular blood ejaculating from his sisters’ diseased lungs as a tempera mixer.

Munch first loses any hope of a good reputation at home in Norway, and then abroad where his canvases are ridiculed for either being too grotesque or for being opportunistic, jumping on the caboose of Parisian expressionism. When I reviewed Malcolm X, I claimed that the best way to process the biopic is to “accept the part of their subjects’ identities and sensibilities that their respective directors seem to understand as their own ideals.” Edvard Munch, in Watkin’s subjective documentary setting, is one of the penultimate cultural crusaders, a relic of a dying era in which individualism could, apparently, still conceivably be intuitive and not reactionary. But he’s also an early crucible of a strangely unified dismissal, a collective critical spanking that stands in for the theoretical “official” assessments of a media-guided anti-consciousness Watkins rails against in his printed statements. Spike Lee undoubtedly thought he had picked up the torch from Malcolm X’s own hand when he directed X, but if Watkins really sees himself as Munch’s successor, wouldn’t he have done better to assign his image to someone who remains marginalized? Munch’s “The Vampire” isn’t the Edvard Munch of its day. It’s the Showgirls.

3.60GB | 1h 43m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E16AE7F64DB837F/Peter_Watkins_-_(1974)_Edvard_Munch.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/4A78EE62B573536/Peter_Watkins_-_(1974)_Edvard_Munch.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/0B27310918D5B12/Peter_Watkins_-_(1974)_Edvard_Munch.part2.rar
https://nitro.download/view/BD5099919BC845C/Peter_Watkins_-_(1974)_Edvard_Munch.part3.rar
https://nitro.download/view/1E0F3D08A417955/Peter_Watkins_-_(1974)_Edvard_Munch.part4.rar

Language(s):Norwegian
Subtitles:English

The post Peter Watkins – Edvard Munch [TV version] (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – The War Game (1966)

admin — Thu, 21 May 2020 07:30:00 +0000

Quote:

Peter Watkins’ The War Game, which was filmed in handheld documentary fashion, speculates on the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Some of the images are almost impossible to look at; they truly illustrate the theory that, in the wake of such a holocaust, the living will envy the dead. The most heart-wrenching scene is the simplest. Asked what he wants to be when he grows up, a sullen young boy, physically unhurt but with obviously deep emotional scars, mutters “I don’t want to be nothin’.” Filmed for BBC television, The War Game was rejected by that august concern as being too graphic. The 47-minute film was released to theatres, making it eligible for the Best Documentary Academy Award, which it won in 1966

1.08GB | 48 min 39 s | 718×538 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/C5D272ECF241CDF/The.War.Game.1965.DVDRip.x264.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/06BEB56BE6094A9/The.War.Game.1965.DVDRip.x264.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/AE02264A887CA3D/The.War.Game.1965.DVDRip.x264.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French

The post Peter Watkins – The War Game (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – Privilege (1967)

admin — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 07:30:37 +0000

Synopsis:
The story is set in the near future of the 1970s and concerns a disillusioned pop singer, played by Jones, who is manipulated by the church and state which seek to turn him into a messianic leader.

Steven Shorter is the ultimate British music star. His music is listened to by everyone from pre-teens to grandparents. He has no trace of public bad habits or drug involvement. Everyone in Britain loves him. His handlers begin to use his popularity for projects like increasing the consumption of apples after a bumper crop as an aid to farmers. The handlers decide that Steven should support God and Country next. This leads to, among other things, a rock version of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and the inclusion of a Nazi salute to make it clear (to the viewer) how far the British population will be taken for love of God and Country under Steven’s guidance. Steven is very plastic in his direction, shifting as his handlers point him toward new projects until he meets Vanessa Ritchie, an artist who makes him look at what’s happening.

2.29GB | 1 h 42 min | 1024×554 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/23C8767D88845A5/Privilege.1967.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Peter Watkins – Privilege (1967) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – Resan AKA The Journey (1987)

admin — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 17:04:19 +0000

A global peace film produced in 1983-86 by the Swedish Peace & Arbitration Society and local support groups in Sweden, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, USSR, Mexico, Japan, Scotland, Polynesia, Mozambique, Denmark, France, Norway, West Germany, with post-production support from the National Film Board in Montreal, Canada.

• Released on film in 1987
• 14 hrs 30 mins

A global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people’s perception of it.

Sweden, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Soviet Union, Mexico, Japan, Scotland, Polynesia, Mozambique, Denmark, France, Norway, West Germany and USA
1987, 16 mm, 870 min

Following Tate Modern’s 2012 retrospective of Peter Watkins’s work, this special screening event offers the unique opportunity to see Watkin’s monumental film The Journey in its complete duration of 14 hours and 30 minutes.
The Journey traces the systemic impact of the global nuclear regime across 12 countries, building an intricate series of connections between the state of the arms trade, military expenditure, the environment and gender politics that are more relevant than ever.
Working collaboratively with activist groups from Sweden, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Soviet Union, Mexico, Japan, Scotland, Polynesia, Mozambique, Denmark, France, Norway, West Germany and USA, over three years, The Journey is an astonishing epic that succeeds in expanding documentary’s powers of polemic, reflexivity and inspiration.
Support groups debate the peace process, families discuss their fears of nuclear threat and the cost of world hunger, survivors recall the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while Watkins analyses the role played by mainstream media in normalising conflict. Peter Watkins’s vision of a political cinema that emerges from and documents the collaborative process which it analyses, reaches its most elaborated form in The Journey which is structured in 19 intricately edited chapters. The result is an unprecedented cinematic constellation whose inspiration and importance has only increased since its release in 1986.
Since the late 1950s, Peter Watkins’s films such as Culloden 1964, The War Game 1966, PunishmentPark 1970, Edvard Munch 1973 and La Commune 1999 have reinvented historical drama and future speculation into impassioned, insurgent political cinema. And yet The Journey 1987, Watkins’s most sustained experiment with documentary, has not been screened in London since its LUX screening in 2003. In the wake of the partial meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011, the critical relevance of The Journey can be neither doubted nor overlooked.

13.55GB | 14 hrs 30 mins | 640×480 | mkv

Language(s):English (French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, German…)
Subtitles:French / English

The post Peter Watkins – Resan AKA The Journey (1987) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Peter Watkins – Fritänkaren aka The Freethinker (1994)

admin — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:01:15 +0000

Quote:
“This is Peter Watkins (epic) companion-piece to his highly acclaimed “Edvard Munch” (1974). “The Freethinker” examines the life, art, and times of the noted Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, author of Miss Julie, Inferno, and Dance of Death. Strindberg is depicted as a rebel, and idealistic and controversial iconoclast who openly criticized the hypocrisy of 19th century society.” (p. back cover) The film broadly focuses on 3 aspects of Strindberg’s life- the impact of his childhood on his psychology and future work; the meaning of his relationship with his first wife, and the way in which Strindberg, as an author, created works that confronted the social injustices of their time.

“This is a unique, complex and truly collaborative project, which focuses much on Strindberg’s often turbulent relationship with his first wife, Siri Von Essen, was based on original and detailed research carried out by Peter Watkins and produced as part of a full length video production course at the Nordens Folkhogskola Biskops-Arno (a film school in Sweden), taking two years to complete (after Wakins had worked for 2 and a half years on research and scriptwriting). The students raised all the funds, sewed all the costumes, learned to operate the equipment and performed all the functions involved in s major theatrical video production.” (p. back cover)

Watkins has organized the film with slow-paced editing in order to to maximize the viewers ability to ponder and reflect on what is portrayed in the film (a direct counter to the fast paced editing and organization of popular cultural texts, “which are designed for maximum manipulation and minimum time for reflection” (p. 4)). Structured non-linearly, Watkins has weaved the 3 elements of Strindberg’s life together, along with juxtapositions of photos, letters, and excerpts from his texts, with hopes of, “highlighting the complexity of Strindberg’s life, and the meaning of the seeming contradictions in his work.” (p. 5) This, Watkins hopes, will enable the viewer to not only learn about Strindberg’s life and influence, but also foster critical thought about the state of the mass media and popular culture- as Strindberg’s works did for his own time.

Watkins has thus heeded the calls of Screen Theorists and has sought to revolutionize the process film production itself, by making it a truly collective, grassroots, collaborative project made almost entirely with non-professional cast and crew members with no previous experience.

Accompanying this DVD is a 16 page booklet which includes a letter-essay that Watkins had written to 70 different high schools and teacher training colleges around Sweden, with hopes that it would clarify some of the more broad social and political implications that the film may influence.

Watkins claims to have includedd this letter as it is felt that he has been socially and politically marginalized by the mainstream media- especially in regards to his discussion surrounding the “crisis of the mass media”- and thus does not want, nor trust, how mainstream journalists and critics interpret and criticize his work. The following statement is included in the “Copyright statement” in the booklet: “With the advancement of globalization and the professional marginalization of Peter Watkins work- especially his critical writings – have increased. This has manifested itself by journalists removing any critical references made by Peter himself (e.g. in an interview) and only quoting his comments about creative and production matters. Even when journalists do include comments made by Peter Watkins, re the crisis of the mass media or the political meaning of his own work, these elements are nearly always reduced or removed entirely by copy editors. The result is inevitably an unbalanced article, devoid of any political or critical context.

As a result of these and many other problems, Peter Watkins no longer gives interviews of any kind. His practice is now to prepare texts on his films in which he tries to cover as many creative and critical elements as possible, based on questions he has been asked in the past.” (p. 1)

2.06GB | 03:00:34 | 640×352 | avi

https://nitroflare.com/view/A7EAADA95754781/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC1-CiNeMANiAC.avi
https://nitroflare.com/view/22382BBF4E44E5D/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC1-CiNeMANiAC.idx
https://nitroflare.com/view/621AC7822ADFA12/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC1-CiNeMANiAC.sub
https://nitroflare.com/view/BBB276BB6940FD0/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC2-CiNeMANiAC.avi
https://nitroflare.com/view/45C20EC40CCF544/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC2-CiNeMANiAC.idx
https://nitroflare.com/view/47043875F56CBEF/Frit%C3%A4nkaren_%28aka_The_Freethinker%29_%28Watkins%2C_2004%29_DISC2-CiNeMANiAC.sub

Eng srt:
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/download/sub/3306614

Language(s):Swedish
Subtitles:english and french (idx + sub)

The post Peter Watkins – Fritänkaren aka The Freethinker (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.