PUNISHMENT PARK

Lee Robert Brown: You don't want to hear my message. You spent fifty years developing a propaganda system that will take the truth and change it into what you want to hear.


The United States, early 1970s: In the shadow of the Vietnam War and growing protest movements, the government declares a state of emergency. Under the McCarran Internal Security Act, political activists, anti-war protesters and civil rights activists are convicted without due process – with a perfidious choice: long-term imprisonment or three days in the so-called ‘Punishment Park’. There they must cover 53 miles through the desert, pursued by police and the National Guard. Those who reach the finish line – an American flag – are supposedly released. But the game is rigged, the violence real.

Peter Watkins stages this scenario as a pseudo-documentary chamber play between tribunal and struggle for survival. The camera remains detached, the defendants' statements are improvised, the anger is real. PUNISHMENT PARK is not a dystopia, but rather an accusatory warning with the urgency of an emergency call.