Watched the recently released DVD tonight, holy shit! Has anyone seen this movie?
I found some info below. The DVD has an excellent intro by the film maker. This film is truly chilling in context of "renditions" the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act etc. The film was for all intents and purposes 'banned' in the US for 30 years
:eyes:
PUNISHMENT PARK
(Peter Watkins, 1971)
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www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/11/pre05163.html
BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)
Released back in 1971 and set against the escalating war in Vietnam and the polarization and rage tearing apart the country at home, the film is a timeless and haunting allegory of America in a state of crisis.
The film rendered BuzzFlash, like so many audiences, utterly speechless.
The film's distributors and critics alike mostly succeeded in shelving "Punishment Park" after its release because of its raw emotional power. Though stashed away for decades and relegated to college media studies courses, this is a film whose time has finally come.
READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW
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http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/punsihment.htmPunishment Park
(US, Chartwell Artists, 1970, 1 hr 30 mins)
Background: 1970. The war in Vietnam is escalating. President Nixon has decided on a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. Nixon declares a state of national emergency, and - we presuppose in the film - activates the 1950 Internal Security Act (the McCarran Act), which authorizes Federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be “a risk to internal security”.
In a desert zone in southwestern California, not far from the tents where a civilian tribunal are passing sentence on Group 638, Group 637 (mostly university students) find themselves in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park, and discover the rules of the ‘game’ they are forced to undergo as part of the alternative they have chosen in lieu of confinement in a penitentiary. Group 637 have been promised liberty if they evade pursuing law enforcement officers and reach the American flag posted 53 miles away across the mountains, within three days. Meanwhile, in the tribunal tent, Group 638 - assumed guilty before tried - endeavour in vain to argue their case for resisting the war in Vietnam. While they argue, amidst harassment by the members of the tribunal, the exhausted Group 637 - dehydrated by exposure to temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit - have voted to split into three subgroups: those for a forced escape out of the Park, those who have given up, and those who are determined to reach the flag ...
Filming: ‘Punishment Park’ was filmed in August 1970, in the San Bernadino desert, about 100 kms from Los Angeles. The cast, as usual, was a mix of mainly non-professional and young professional actors, mostly from Los Angeles and environs. The members of the tribunal were all portrayed by citizens of Los Angeles - a trade union officer, a dentist, a housewife ... Producer - Susan Martin; principal camera operator - Joan Churchill; sound recordist - Mike Moore; set director - David Hancock; editors - Peter Watkins and Terry Hodel; percussion music by Paul Motian.
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Aftermath in the USA:
‘Punishment Park’ was released in the Murray Hill Cinema in an out-of-the-way part of Manhattan, New York City, and already it was clear that the US distributor was not going to properly handle the film. It remains unclear whether the cinema owner (or the distributor) was affected by the hostile critics, or whether the Federal authorities issued threats. In any case, ‘Punishment Park’ was withdrawn from the cinema after only four days. Since then, ‘Punishment Park’ has rarely been shown in the US, and never on TV. A representative of a main Hollywood studio which could have released ‘Punishment Park’ was quoted as saying something to the effect that, “We could never show this film, we would have the Sheriff’s office
on our necks in five minutes.” Participants at a seminar for TV producers from 24 Public Broadcasting System (PBS) stations across the US all swore that they could never, and would never show a film like this on American TV. And so they haven’t.
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http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/021.htm
PUNISHMENT PARK
(Peter Watkins, 1971)
UK/USA | 1.33:1 OAR | Date of release: October 2005
Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramer's Ice (1969), Peter Watkins' film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Giving voice to the disaffected youth of America that had lived through the campus riots at Berkeley, the trial of the Chicago Seven and who were witnessing the escalation of the Vietnam War, Punishment Park was named by Rolling Stone as one of their top ten films of 1971 and has earned many admirers in the four decades since its release.
Set in a detention camp in an America of the near-future, Punishment Park's pseudo-documentary style (continuing Watkins' subversive innovations with Culloden and The War Game) places a British film crew amongst a group of young students and minor dissidents who have opted to spend three days in 'Bear Mountain Punishment Park'. The detainees, rather than accept lengthy jail sentences for their 'crimes', gamble their freedom on an attempt to reach an American flag — on foot and without water — through the searing heat of the desert. The pursuit of Group 637 — a lethal, one-sided game of cat-and-mouse with a squad of heavily armed police and National Guardsmen — is contrasted with the corrupt trial of Group 638 by a quasi-judicial tribunal.
Unlike Easy Rider's mythologising of American counter-culture, Punishment Park's uncompromising stance, and its uneasy parallels with Guantanamo Bay, retain a powerful and prescient message in the post-9/11 present. Rarely seen in the UK, The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to celebrate Punishment Park's 35th anniversary with its first British release on home video.
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