Peter Watkins

Directing·Oct 29, 1935·Norbiton, Surrey, England, UK

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Peter Watkins (29 October 1935 – 30 October 2025) was an English filmmaker, documentarian, writer and film theorist. He is known as a pioneer of the docudrama and the mockumentary genres, typically with heavy political content. His films present pacifist and radical ideas in a nontraditional style. He mainly concentrated his works and ideas around the mass media and viewers' relation/participation to a movie or television documentary. Nearly all of Watkins' films have used a combination of dramatic and documentary elements to dissect historical occurrences or possible near future events. The first of these, Culloden, portrayed the Jacobite uprising of 1745 in a documentary style, as if television reporters were interviewing the participants and accompanying them into battle; a similar device was used in his biographical film Edvard Munch. La Commune (Paris, 1871) reenacts the Paris Commune days using a large cast of French non-actors. In 2004 he also wrote a book, Media Crisis, an engaged essay about the media crisis, the monoform and, foremost, the lack of debate around the construction of new forms of audiovisual media. Description above from the Wikipedia article Peter Watkins, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Film	Credit
The War Game at Cinecity2026 · Self (Archival footage)	Self (Archival footage)
The Trap2012 · Writer, Director	Writer, Director
TThe Making of Culloden2006 · Self	Self
Introduction to Punishment Park2004 · Himself, Director	Himself, Director
La Commune (Paris, 1871)2003 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
The Role of a Lifetime2003 · Self	Self
The Universal Clock: The Resistance of Peter Watkins2001 · Himself	Himself
The Freethinker1994 · Policeman, Director, Writer	Policeman, Director, Writer
The Media Project1991 · Writer, Director	Writer, Director
The Journey1987 · Narrator / Self, Writer, Director, Producer	Narrator / Self, Writer, Director, Producer
Evening Land1977 · Director	Director
The Seventies People1975 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
Edvard Munch1974 · Narrator (voice), Director, Writer	Narrator (voice), Director, Writer
Punishment Park1971 · Documentarist (uncredited), Director, Screenplay	Documentarist (uncredited), Director, Screenplay
The Gladiators1969 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
Privilege1967 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
The War Game1966 · Documentist (uncredited), Director, Producer, Writer	Documentist (uncredited), Director, Producer, Writer
Culloden1964 · Field Interviewer (voice) (uncredited), Director, Writer, Producer	Field Interviewer (voice) (uncredited), Director, Writer, Producer
The Controllers1963 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
The Forgotten Faces1961 · Writer, Director	Writer, Director
The Diary of an Unknown Soldier1959 · Narrator (voice), Director, Producer, Writer	Narrator (voice), Director, Producer, Writer
The Web1956 · Director, Producer	Director, Producer