The films of Peter Watkins (U.K.) blur the documentary and the imagined, either projecting into a speculative future or onto a hypothetical present. Punishment Park follows a 'what if' scenario or 'alternate history', asking what if a state of national emergency was declared in the United States? The war in Vietnam is escalating. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency, and 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, a group of young people who have been judged as 'subversives' by the authorities find themselves in a tribunal tent in Bear Mountain National Park. Here they discover the rules of the 'game' they are forced to play as part of the alternative they have chosen to confinement in prison. A documentary crew films the proceedings.
Punishment Park is a unique pseudo-documentary, political sci-fi thriller.
On a cinematic level the film has lost none of its ability to shock, engage and disorientate. Utterly compelling on a narrative level, it now seems frighteningly relevant once again in the face of the U.S. Patriot Act, the incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the current polarisation of political viewpoints in the West.
