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DARK SIDE OF THE MOON - Part I

The Global Media Crisis - Peter Watkins

The following statement is the first of two parts. It is specifically concerned with the
language form of the mass audiovisual media – i.e., the use by the MAVM of a
repetitive, standardized structure, and abbreviated time and space, to control the
audience. I am concentrating on this little debated aspect of the media first, because it
has played an essential role in developing the narrative structure which has been in
place, and enforced, since the birth of the cinema. It is my contention that had we
acknowledged and critically confronted this Monoform language decades ago, we
would probably not be where we are today – in the grip of the relentlessly
abbreviated MAVM and so-called ‘social media’.

Part II will discuss aspects of the new technology (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and their
subterranean relationship – in combination with the MAVM – to the increasing
acceptance of global authoritarianism and the rise of populism. Part II will also
introduce some thoughts on the role of the print media in the growing crisis, and
critical research by the French author Juliette Volcler on the growing (mis) use of
SOUND, including by the mass media. It will also present alternative media
education principles and practices, and a number of references to supportive voices
for my own work over the past 50 years.

By the ‘global media crisis' I mean a composite of issues relating to the

standardization of the mass audiovisual media, which began early in the 20th century
with the development of the language form used by Hollywood to narrate and
structure cinema films. This language form, which fundamentally has never changed,
was adopted by international TV in the 1950s and is now taken on by the internet,
YouTube, social media, etc.

In the mid-1970s, during summer courses at Columbia University in New York City,
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a group of students and I studied and specified the characteristics of this uniform and
repetitive language form which frames almost the entire output of the MAVM. We
called it the Monoform.

With few exceptions, the Hollywood Monoform has been adopted by virtually all
creators of commercial films, most documentary films, and by all aspects of
television production including news broadcasting. This global adoption of one
language form – in effect a standardization of the mass audiovisual media – is a
central issue of the media crisis. It means, for example, that a documentary film can
basically have much the same form and narrative structure as a Netflix drama series.

The Monoform is like a time-and-space grid clamped down over all the various
elements of any film or TV programme. This tightly constructed grid promotes a
rapid flow of changing images or scenes, constant camera movement, and dense
layers of sound. A principal characteristic of the Monoform is its rapid, agitated
editing, which can be identified by timing the interval between edited shots (or cuts),
and dividing the number of seconds into the overall lengthof the film. In the 1970s,
the Average Shot Length for a cinema film (or documentary, or TV news broadcast)
was approximately 6-7 seconds, today the commercial ALS is probably circa 3-4
seconds, and decreasing.1

It is my belief that the excessive demands of these flashing images on our emotional
and intellectual responses can lead to blurred distinctions between themes, and to a
confusion in selecting and prioritizing our reactions (e.g., to the news scene of a
bleeding body in a bombed area in Syria, which is followed by a commercial
message, and sooner of later, by the image of a similarly bleeding body in a film or
TV drama, etc.).

Despite academic claims that audiences have become ‘media literate', the
standardized rate at which audiovisual information is delivered is probably far too
swift to be properly managed by the brain, which has to digest and process the rapid

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and continual change of visual (and audio) information from one scene to the next,
and to the next, and to the next, and so on. I can anticipate a negative response from
the media education sector to this analysis on the grounds that it is ‘arrogant' to
presume that audiences cannot understand or decipher the workings of the Monoform
(even if they believe such a thing exists). But the fact that viewers ingest the
Monoform every day is not a precursor to understanding how (or why) it functions in
the way that it does. The form itself may neutralize any understanding of how it
works, including by habituating us to its presentation, not to mention its more
subterranean and less perceivable properties. As this subject is never raised by the
MAVM, and is too rarely discussed by media educators, there is hardly a wealth of
analysis or information for people to rely on.

Media scholars also claim that this fragmented message process is beneficial,
because - in true postmodern tradition - it allows us to interpret audiovisual material
in multiple different ways. But without a public forum or collective discussion, these
fragmented individual reactions are not likely to deliver us out of our present global
predicament. Can we look at the political, social and environmental chaos of our
world, and not wonder if the most powerful forms of communication ever devised by
man might play a role in what is happening?

The other day there was a public meeting in our village in France, on the theme,
“Comment s'adapter face au changement climatique” (How to adapt to climate
change). Notably, the thrust of the talk was adaptation. Insulating a roof to prevent
heat loss is important, but it is not an analysis of what has caused climate change, or
how to oppose it, or the role played by the MAVM in fostering it. In precisely the
same way, audiences, most media professionals, and educators all over the world
have adapted to the Monoform and its effects – with little discussion, query or
challenge.

Generally, of course, we can only speculate on the long term psychological and
environmental effects of the sustained use of the Monoform MAVM. But amongst

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those that have come to light, as early as in the 1990s, is the fact that there has been a
severe drop in the attention span of children (and now most adults) over the past 3-4
decades.

Significantly, we have done nothing to try to reverse this attention span problem, nor
do we even discuss its possible sources. Why is this? I think it bears repeating that
this may be due to the fact that the language of the Monoform mass media has itself
neutralized our very awareness of its effects, deprioritizing or even blocking any
attempt to challenge it – let alone change it.

In considering the problem of standardization, it is important to keep in mind that the

Monoform is just one of numerous audiovisual language forms and processes that are
available to the mass media and to the individual filmmaker. Cinema, TV popular
culture, news programmes and documentaries could allow multiple variations in the
use of time, space and rhythm. The potential for variety is borne out by the various
alternative narrative, documentary, and experimental films that have been produced
during the relatively brief history of the cinema. Many of them do not use the
Monoform to relate to their audiences. Unfortunately, given the crushing weight of
the contemporary MAVM, most alternative works are rarely seen other than at
‘specialist' film festivals or film courses.

This in turn means that the MAVM continue to prevent any serious professional
debate, or open discussion in public, as to the ways in which we could learn,
including from alternative works, how to break out of the standard media practices
and unseal the stultifying existing relationship between the MAVM and the audience.

We can extrapolate from all of this that the Monoform is not only a particular
language form, but that it is also the entire ethos behind the approach of the MAVM
towards mass communication and the relationship with the public. The very word
‘communication' is a misnomer to start with, since a genuine two-way
communication does not exist in the way that the MAVM function - either with

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respect to their own fellow professionals, or regarding the public.

As far as the internal environment of the MAVM is concerned, their members have
created and accepted their own professional practices (‘demons' I prefer to call them).
These include the demeaning exercise called ‘pitching', in which filmmakers seek
funding for their TV or film projects by standing before their fellow professionals
and proposing a programme idea in approximately six minutes. It is visibly apparent
that a professional practice like this reproduces the ethos of the Monoform. Six
minutes to evaluate, to accept or reject, the theme of a documentary film?

There is also the TV scheduling practice known as the ‘universal clock', in which a
programme hour is in fact 52 minutes (or less), in order to allow time for commercial
advertising. This means that those TV programmes and films that can be explained in
six minutes are then edited to a uniform length of precisely 52 minutes, irrespective
of the demand or importance of their theme. The ‘universal clock' allows TV stations
to replace programmes (they should be called 'modules') at the last minute, by others
of the same length.

This Kafkaesque situation is far worse in its implications for the public. I have
already described how the mass audiovisual language form is usually constructed.
But what is the ideology that supports it? Perhaps we can't give it a precise name, but
we can certainly describe its intent , which is the opposite of any form of genuine
two-way communication. The aim of the MAVM is to create a non-stop stream of
impact points (surprises as one filmmaker called them) that will prevent viewers
from being bored, and – crucially important – from experiencing a variety of
reactions, let alone have time to reflect upon or query what is entering their
subconscious. Of course, human nature doesn't always work this way, but that does
not alter the intent of the professional Monoform creators.

The MAVM are not alone in creating and maintaining the crisis described here. Much
of the world of MEDIA EDUCATION – including Media, Journalism and Culture

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Studies , Cinema and TV Studies , teacher training courses, national film schools,
universities - is now complicitous with the MAVM in constraining the relation-ship
between the audiovisual media and the public.

Over the years most MAVM and media education professionals have enforced the
Monoform as the declared sine qua non for the success of any cinema film, TV
programme or documentary. “Success” here does not mean conveying audiovisual
messages in such a manner that the audience is participating in a pluralistic manner
in the process. On the contrary, for many professionals, “success” means creating a
captive audience that passively allows hierarchical audiovisual messages – overt and
covert – to penetrate deep into its subconscious. The potential consequences inherent
in using the MAVM are rarely discussed by media professionals, and hardly more so
within the corridors of most contemporary media education institutions. Discussion
of the topic at the tertiary level is usually subsumed by the prioritized instruction of
the ways and techniques – the “skills” or “standard practices'' - of the Monoform.

For example, I once asked a professor of media studies at a university in the south of
France about critical teaching, and the Monoform, in their courses. He hesitated, and
then said, “Well, we do teach them standard media practices”. I asked if he meant the
Monoform… “No, no!” he said hurriedly, and then proceeded to reassure me that he
meant teaching the students practical things like which buttons to press on the editing
machines. He avoided telling me what the students were taught once they knew
which buttons to press, but he did clarify the position of his media department: “We
do allow the students to make their own alternative films, but of course we know that
these students will never enter the professional media …”

On record is the following statement made by a TV executive: “We're ahead of the

game because we've had to do it for so long... you build in the customization right
from the word ‘go' – almost the moment that the pencil touches the paper pad... there
are film-makers who quite justifiably say: ‘This is my work and I want it to stay as it
is'. That's their right and we respect that. Those are the films we don't buy and those

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are the films we don't transmit.”2

What is striking here (apart from the irony that the speaker was an executive at the
‘Discovery Channel' ! ) is not only the fact that the media education sector knows, a
priori , that the MAVM will generally avoid or suppress alternative work, but also the
implication that educators appear to be doing little, if anything, to change – let alone
challenge – this situation.

It must be despairing to those students with different visions of film and the
documentary form, to realize that in reality they have been written-off by their
teachers, and that they cannot expect professional support once they leave the tertiary
sector, simply because they have chosen non-standard forms of audiovisual
expression.

This raises an essential question: what exactly is the role of a school or university
media course? Is it to provide authoritarian and narrowly directed professional
training as a form of apprenticeship prior to entering a particular profession or
industry? Or is education, in the broadest sense, meant to encourage people to
examine the world around them, and to offer a variety of views and alternative
possibilities - along with the freedom to develop their own critical insights and their
own creative talents?

The answer to this question is, sadly, all too obvious. I have recently begun to
research courses listed on the websites of UK universities offering media education,
and of the dozen that I have thus far checked, nearly all appear to teach the “standard
practices” of the MAVM to media, film, and journalism students – the idea being,
presumably, that they will provide ‘fresh blood' for the machinery of the mass
communication industry. Disturbingly forthright in their publicity, most of these
universities offer “out of the box” and “cutting edge teaching”, “critical training” and
promises of “job placement” within the mass media.

I suspect an obfuscation of the terms of reference here, including of the word

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“critical”. “Out of the box” actually means jumping out of one box into another. Not
discussing the media crisis or the problems inherent in the standardization of the
MAVM will always affect students, and in turn the viewing / listening / reading
public.

One needs to be wary of promises such as, “you'll be taught by leading names in
media, communications and cultural studies”. Many of these teachers and media
workers have themselves grown up as children of the Monoform, often with no
genuinely critical media education, with the result that most of them view the
standardized media as being a ‘normal' part of the culture, and thus beyond any
holistic challenge.

One UK university writes: “Film is the dominant art form of the 21st century, both
reflecting and influencing society and culture. Learning to read films as more than a
form of entertainment will develop your skills in analysis and interpretation.” But
further down one reads that this same university has spent an incredible sum of
money (enough to feed, clothe and shelter thousands of displaced persons) on
“investment in college facilities to make sure students have access to the most up-to-
date, industry standard equipment. Our strong industry links with employers means
our students are now expected to secure work placements as part of their wider
learning...”

I had hoped that colleges of art might somehow be an oasis in this depressing scene,
but in my initial research I immediately came across a college of art in the UK which
offers media training courses and uses a local video production company to provide
equipment and training. The promo video produced by this company for the college
is almost a satire of the biff-bang-wallop genre, with scenes flashing by in less than a
few seconds. Accompanied by jarring music and gymnastic camera movements, it is
practically a do-it-yourself exercise in producing the Monoform.

Media Popular Culture is another broad front embracing non-critical media

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education. By the early 1980s, teaching popular culture had become almost as big a
business as the MPC itself. The propaganda in this case included an emphasis on the
alleged ‘democratic values' inherent in popular culture (soap operas, crime series,
etc.) by nature of its ‘street level' commonly shared appeal.

Accompanying the propaganda was the barely veiled threat by certain academics that
opposition to media popular culture was ‘middle class and elitist'. This form of rarely
challenged marginalization effectively became a serious obstacle to genuinely critical
media education. And thirty years later we have very little critical discussion about
the authoritarian nature and values of popular media “standard practices” - including
regarding their role in embedding the Monoform deeply into the MAVM culture, and
thereby delivering us into the arms of commercial interests and the dictates of the
State.

Why are the media departments of many tertiary institutions complicitous in the
media crisis, why do they behave like branches of the MAVM rather than
independent places of learning?

I understand the need for job placement in this day and age - but job placement into
what, and with what end in view? I have often heard media students, who have
worked in the MAVM for a year or two, say that they had known of the difficulties in
their profession, and that they had planned to change things, to develop their own
ideas once they entered the mainstream. It took about a year or so for reality to hit
home...

Why do so many universities compound the problem by denying their students a

more holistic and critical evaluation of the MAVM and their role in society?

Non-critical media teaching is now spreading like wildfire to the secondary school
sector. Various countries use their education systems to impart to their students the
“skills” necessary to shoot films and videos (even if these students have no intention
of joining the MAVM), thereby utilizing a classic method for teaching young people

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to accept the consumerist and fragmented popular culture.

As an example of the general direction of global media teaching, I quote from a

promotional blurb about a program in the French national education system called
CLEMI, which focuses on drawing secondary school pupils into the web of the
media popular culture, and professional skills: ” Each year, thousands of students
take the floor, and, with the help of their teachers, produce print and online
newspapers, radio programs and videos. School media projects enable young people
to acquire skills far beyond traditional knowledge.” There is no prize for guessing
what skills and world views are involved here, and what role the Monoform plays
therein.

I can imagine a rebuttal from this sector claiming that youngsters are being taught to
be ‘media literate', but as this pedagogy seems to be based on teaching how to
‘appreciate the aesthetic pleasures' of the cinema, it is doubtful that there is much
critical evaluation of the MAVM. I wrote to several local French schools which
promote the CLEMI program, to ask if they discuss the standardization of the
MAVM, but had no reply even to repeated letters.

Many media and education professionals deny the existence of one standardized,
controlling audiovisual form. Indeed, most actually seem to be unaware of the role
played by a structural language form when they produce (or teach) cinema and TV,
and appear to have great difficulty in accepting that the way in which a message is
shaped and delivered directly affects the way in which the message is received and
perceived.

If, for example, I am at a public meeting, and I have a message to pass to someone in
the audience facing me, I do have choices. I can speak directly from the platform. Or
I can write the message on a piece of paper, put it into a steel film can, and hurl the
can at the victim. Conversely, I can sit beside the person, and quietly give him/her the
same message. Even better, I can engage in a dialogue. Each method delivers the

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message, but each method has an entirely different meaning for the participant who
receives and accepts said message. And, yes, there has been a choice.

Yet we who work with the MAVM – especially those of us who produce, direct, edit,
or teach – seem mostly unable to apply this logic to how we structure audiovisual
messages, to grasp that how we organize filmic time, space and rhythm can directly
affect how the viewer perceives the content, or to imagine that there are numerous
possibilities for variations in this process. And so, media teachers continue to teach
media students - and even more disturbingly, secondary school pupils - the “skills”
that are necessary for the “standard practice” of making a film or a video.

Apart from the MAVM's likely role in fostering consumerism, climate change,
sexism, aggression, fear of the other, anti-immigrant sentiments, privatization instead
of collectivity, etc., and apart from the destructive role that enforcement of media
standard practices has played on the creative development of the cinema and
television, we are also continuing to deny any public or pedagogical debate about the
possibility of democratic choice in how the general community receives a/v material.
We deny the public any form of pluralistic role in the creation and reception of the
MAVM. Clearly we professionals don't want this - we want the public at a safe arm's
length, for they frighten us. Therefore we use a language form calculated to deny
time and space for reflection, let alone interrogation as to what viewers are watching
and listening to.

Given this situation, trying to find a place of learning without the industry directed
traps that I have described here requires careful navigating for a non-authoritarian
and more open ended form of media education. It does still exist. I located an internet
site of an English university that states: “We live in a multicultural society and media
saturated world. Most of what we know about the world comes to us through the
media – but how much do we know about the media? Whether as sources of
information, producers of entertainment or modes of creative self expression,
contemporary media are all too seldom subject to intense scrutiny and critical

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interrogation, except during feverish moments of scandal, crisis or panic.”

This university is suggesting that students probe these issues by fusing sociology,
cultural, and media studies; indeed the course is offered from within the Department
of Sociology. The website continues: “You will be encouraged to reflect critically on
the role of popular media in structuring our everyday lives. The course examines the
role of media in reproducing, disseminating and challenging hegemonic power
relations, as well as thinking through the ways in which genders, sexuality, and ‘race'
are constructed in global media cultures.”

“This is not a vocational or practice-based degree. However, it is a degree that will

teach you skills in critical thinking, independent research, and analysis highly
relevant for development and innovation in the cultural and media sectors.”

I have not attended this course, nor visited this university. I am just very encouraged
by what it writes, and by the fact that it is not accompanied by claims of a new multi-
million dollar studio or any blandishments to be “out of the box” and at the “cutting
edge”.

I do understand that the issues I refer to are not black and white. For example, I have
noticed new developments creeping into the language form of various narrative
feature films in the past decade or so – a willingness to hold the camera on the face
of someone during a dialogue scene, an increased complexity of narrative structure,
fusing past and present, etc. One cannot say to what degree these sorts of changes are
due to an increased critical understanding of the Monoform problem, or simply there
as interesting stylistic changes. Repeated use of the latter can of course result in their
becoming elements of the Monoform, or, equally possible, a new revised Monoform.

Even more complex is the fact that the use of the Monoform in and of itself cannot,
and does not, always override the value of the theme, or the intensity of the acting, or
a particular complex structure. We have all seen films where these elements outweigh
the constraints of the Monoform. For example, the other evening my wife Vida and I
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viewed a film from Iran, entitled Life+1 Day (2016, Saeed Roustayi). Set in present
day Tehran, the film represents a family caught up in the problems of poverty, drug
addiction, and an arranged marriage that will leave the family even worse off. The
ensemble playing was remarkable, and in no way constrained by the Monoform. Of
course, the same dynamic effect – the same awareness bought to bear on the suffering
caused by poverty – could have been achieved by other language forms, but this does
not change the fact that it was very effective as conveyed here by the Monoform.
This does not, however, mean that the Monoform functions equally well when
applied uniformly to nearly all audiovisual material!

I need to draw attention now to another highly problematic aspect of the Monoform -
the repression that keeps it in place. The fact that I give examples of the
marginalization of my own work does not – I want to stress – mean that these
experiences are unique to myself. But as I do not have access to the life experiences
of other filmmakers, I offer a few examples from my own, as evidence of the way in
which alternative, critical ideas are discredited and marginalized within the
audiovisual media.

To begin at the beginning of my own story: after an enjoyable period of making

amateur films, I went on to train, in the early 1960s, at the BBC. There we were
taught that professional ‘'objectivity” was the absolute sine qua non of TV
broadcasting. We were informed that if we did not apply this standard, but allowed
subjectivity to influence our work, we would have to leave the BBC and “make our
name in some other field” (!) The Monoform was obviously never discussed - nor
was the lie that there is a ‘neutral' way of presenting audiovisual information.

Although I was unaware, before my time at Columbia University in the mid-1970s,

of the problems of the Monoform, and despite the fact that I used this language form
liberally to structure my own work, I did try from the outset to subvert the concept of
media ‘reality' and infallibility. I used what I hoped was a visible warning sign (a
fake documentary style), and I did express my subjective feelings in my work

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(regarding the consequences of nuclear war in THE WAR GAME, the conformist
effects of popular culture in PRIVILEGE, the treatment of protesters in
PUNISHMENT PARK, the personal sentiments expressed in EDVARD MUNCH,
etc.). But I am not at all sure that these attempts outweigh the perceptual problems
inherent in the Monoform as I used it in these and other works prior to the 1980s.

I definitely tried to challenge the standard Monoform structure in my later films,

THE JOURNEY, THE FREETHINKER, LA COMMUNE - but their success or
otherwise is not something that I can judge.

The criticism of my films by both the MAVM and a good number of film critics has
been non-ending. It began in the 1960s with the banning of THE WAR GAME and
with deliberate attempts by the BBC to blacken my name at that time.3 The
marginalization in the UK escalated with vehement attacks by the British press on
my first feature film PRIVILEGE, and with the TV banning of PUNISHMENT
PARK in the United States (which continues to this day); it included the blocking of
my proposals for TV drama-documentaries on the danger of nuclear meltdown (I was
told that this could never happen); it persevered with the refusal by the Franco-
German TV station ARTE (co-producer of the film) to screen LA COMMUNE at a
normal hour, followed later by the destruction of the film negative by the original
producer.4 Etc.

Actions such as these have been interwoven with the long running marginalization by
media educators of my critical work on the Monoform, and by schools that have not
permitted me to work with their students. On the positive side, over the past years I
have been much supported by a number of universities and colleges where I have
held critical media courses (Columbia in NYC; Utica College, New York; Wayne
State University, Detroit; Monash in Melbourne, Australia; University of Auckland,
N.Z., the Red Cross and Biskops-Arno Folk High Schools, Sweden; etc.). But I have
never been accepted into the more general university milieu on a longer term basis to
develop courses in critical media education.

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A particularly unpleasant aspect to the marginalizing process has been the ad

hominem nature of the attacks on my work – whether from my own profession or in
the field of media education. Notable in more recent years is the fact that even an
acknowledgement that my films may have some validity is ‘balanced' by an attack,
often vindictive, on me personally.

For example, in Camera Historica (2008), a book on the work of various filmmakers,
the author Antoine De Baecque, a French professor of film studies and the editor in
chief of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma , writes: “Scathing accusations
against the political and media ‘other', and permanent suspicion of a conspiracy being
fomented against him have come to constitute Peter Watkins's discourse of
martyrdom. It is part and parcel of his style and method, which can be seen as
paranoid... Peter Watkins can be considered both the victim and the perpetrator of his
own martyrdom... “. He also writes that I challenge the documentary genre with
“insolent and libertarian violence”.

Another example comes from the introduction materials to a conference on my work,

organized by the University of Bordeaux III in 2010.5 About a dozen scholars gave
papers and spoke seriously about my work on the Monoform at this event. It had
been the only such conference on my work, and was therefore very important to me.
This did not prevent the two media scholars who organized the conference from
writing the following qualification in their introduction: “… as Antoine de Baecque
has noted in his book, the man is an immense cinéaste before being a great thinker.”

There is also an article in The Journal of Contemporary History (2006), written by a

British professor of Cultural Studies. Throughout his article, The BBC and the
Censorship of The War Game (1965), this academic keeps repeating how difficult I
was to deal with [well yes, I did resist the banning of the film] with state-ments such
as, “Watkins did himself no favours with his incessant complaints and demands...
impatient, opinionated and stubborn.” The professor concludes with the assertion
that, “... the decision not to broadcast The War Game, far from being a conspiracy to

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keep the 'truth' of nuclear warfare from the British public, as Watkins maintained,
was instead the result of a range of institutional and cultural factors that caused the
BBC to act as it did.”

I don't know when this professor did his research, but some time later, Professor John
Cook, a media scholar at Glasgow Caledonian University, unearthed several BBC
memoranda that proved that the BBC had indeed yielded to government pressure to
ban The War Game, and that the BBC had lied to the public when it denied this fact
in 1966.6

Another aspect of the marginalization against my work could be called ‘the wipeout'
- rather than name-call, this practice pretends that my films and media critique barely
exist. Some months ago, I received an email from a Turkish writer and film
enthusiast, who remarked that younger generations are not aware of my work. He
also mentioned that he had never seen an article about my work either in Cahiers du
Cinéma or the British film magazine Sight and Sound . I have often been told that
young people have not heard of my films. I think this is particularly true in my own
country, where the status quo cinema organs have conducted a policy of “studied
avoidance” regarding my work.7, 8

One last aspect of the media crisis is the international film festival, a phenomenon
that I write about in some detail on my website. Suffice it to say here that even the
less commercial festivals (e.g., the non-red-carpet variety) invariably find it nearly
impossible to break their traditional pattern of mass consumption, in order to allow
the public time to discuss what they are seeing. There is even less time for debating
the issue of the standardized forms that are flashing before their eyes. I, and those
who on occasion have represented my work, have asked festival organizers for a
public discussion (not an event curated and controlled by film experts) on the issues
raised by my work, but have been denied this possibility. “There is no time”, we are
usually told. Nor perhaps the wish.

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Be all of this as it may - the problems that have beset my own work are of relevance
only if they can help to raise debate on the resistance of the MAVM and the media
education sector to breaking out of their standardized practices, and to seriously re-
examining the nature of their impact on the public and on students.

The essential challenge is to find ways to encourage people to take up these issues
with MAVM and media education professionals, to press for critical debate and
democratic change that can lead at least to a genuine CHOICE for the public between
the Monoform and alternative, pluralistic media processes. The same goes for what is
taught to students and pupils.

Given the difficult reality, I am extremely pleased that the Wolf Kino in Berlin has
decided not only to host a retrospective of my work in May and June, 2018, but also
to open it up for public discussion on the basis of its relationship to the media crisis I
have shared here. On this occasion – there will be time!

Peter Watkins,
Felletin, France
March-April 2018
Edited: Vida Urbonavicius

FOOT NOTES

1. See also Barry Salt, ‘Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis', 1983
and ‘Cinemetrics', the film measurement database and study tool programme
created by Yuri Tsivian and Gunars Civjans in 2005. cinemetrics.lv/dev/tsivian

2. Extract from the documentary film The Universal Clock – The Resistance of
Peter Watkins (2001; by Canadian filmmakers Geoff Bowie and Petra Valier)

3. In Dec. 1966 the BBC stated on the evening news (!) that I had deliberately
hidden tripwires in the heather to ensure ‘realism' when the Highlanders were
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shot down by the Government army, in my film CULLODEN. This

‘information' had not been verified with the cast, and was entirely false.

4. This episode and other methods of marginalisation will be further described in

Part ll of this statement.

5. ‘L'insurrection médiatique: Médias, histoire et documentaire dans le cinéma de

Peter Watkins ‘.

6. As reported in ‘The Herald', Scotland, June 1, 2015

7. Among the UK encyclopedias of the cinema that don't mention my work:

CINEMA THE WHOLE STORY ed. Philip Kemp, 2013; NEW
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM David Thomson, 1975, reissued
2010; RADIO TIMES (UK) GUIDE TO FILMS (2016) - the index ends with
Punishment Park (1970) ; BFI CINEMA BOOK 3 (the latest edition – the year
being ? ); THE OXFORD HISTORY OF WORLD CINEMA 1996.
I don't know if TIME OUT LONDON is still published, but for ca 20 years this
large, annual publication of film reviews in London retained an early review of
Culloden , including with the following statement: "His oeuvre may be
characterised as a progression from polemical hysteria to formal paranoia."

8. On a positive note, I should mention that although the British Film Insititute has
played a very ambivalent role regarding my work (including to decline being
part of a lecture tour I gave in the UK in 1996), there is now a very positive
review by Will Fowler of my work on the BFI website: screenonline.org.uk

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