Punishment Park is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews’s news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels’ progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination.
At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew’s coverage is meant to insure that the military’s intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60’s counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scenes real tempers seem to flare as some of the “acting” got overaggressive.
This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinéma vérité style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director – would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking – pushed some to the brink. The cast’s emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.
Punishment Park is a 1971 American pseudo-documentary drama film written and directed by Peter Watkins. The setting is of a British and West German film crew following National Guard soldiers and police as they pursue members of a counterculture group across a desert.
Punishment Park (1971)
Directed by: Peter Watkins
Starring: Mark Keats, Gladys Golden, Sanford Golden, Sigmund Rich, George Gregory, Katherine Quittner, Carmen Argenziano, Mary Ellen Kleinhall, Stanford Armstead, Patrick Boland, Kent Foreman
Screenplay by: Peter Watkins
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Joan Churchill, Peter Smokler
Film Editing by: Terry Hodel, Peter Watkins
Art Direction by: David Hancock
Makeup Department: Miriam Nunberg
Music by: Paul Motian
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Project X Distribution
Release Date: January 1, 1971
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