Subversive film director Peter Watkins to be honored with a retrospective-tribute at the Trianon Filmcenter
A well-known voice of dissent will be heard in Athens this week, as the Trianon Filmcenter organizes a tribute to Peter Watkins from February 28 to March 6. Over the last 43 years, the British director has directed groundbreaking, innovative films, ranging from nuclear nightmares to global poverty, using documentaries or fiction to criticize contemporary sociopolitical reality. Watkins’s consistent wary stance toward the media and their role has, unfortunately, kept his films generally out of the public eye. Essentially a retrospective of his works, the Athens tribute begins with the celebrated «War Game» – an Oscar winner for best documentary in 1966, it was banned by the BBC for two decades – leading to his most recent work «La Commune.» Produced in 2000, the latter narrates the story of the Paris Commune government of 1871. Also part of the upcoming tribute are «Edvard Munch» (1974), and «Punishment Park» (1971). Born in Surrey, England, in 1935, Watkins began his career in advertising as an assistant producer and turned to amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s, he was commissioned to work on two docu-dramas for the BBC, marking the beginning of his subversive course in filmmaking. The Trianon Filmcenter is at 21 Kodringtonos Street, Athens (tel 210.821.5469).
