Hello, my name's Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we are talking about Peter Watkins, the preeminent mockumentarian, right, Will?

That's right, the Christopher guest of his day.

You know, Roger Ebert wrote a review of Peter Watkins' film Privilege in 1967,

where he predicted that Watkins would eventually join the ranks of Bergman and Fellini.

And I think it's safe to say that that didn't happen, which is not to say that he's not as great in his own way.

But he's not as famous as Bergman and Fellini,

and he's not doing the same sort of thing as them

because he spent his life genuinely challenging

the constraints of the business of film and television.

Isn't it wild to watch his movies and see films that are politically motivated, politically

aggressive, but also in a format that the regular viewer can understand and make an impact?

I mean, when we talk about political filmmaking, a lot of the times, uh, let's say Jean-A Godard would make very obtuse films about the subjects, while Peter

Watkins are so in your face that one of the reasons that he did not have as big a career as those

other, you know, heralded filmmakers is that when his pictures would come out, they were so effective that oftentimes

the people in charge were like, put them away, we don't want to see these. These could actually

do damage if a mass audience saw them. Also, the decisions that he made in his filmmaking went

against the whole, all of his decisions went against the, you know, media industrial complex. They went against how a film is supposed to be made. I mean, he made a 14 and a half hour documentary about nuclear proliferation. He made a 375 minute movie called La Commune, which is about the working class radicals who ruled France for four months

after Napoleon III was defeated.

And that one was made in a sort of documentary style with this huge ensemble of non-professional

actors.

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