After you have watched
Peter Watkins disturbing vision of a limited nuclear attack on Kent towns in
the south of England could you please tell me why some idiots still want to
preserve our nuclear weaponry? Maybe
people think there safe because Trident is based in Scotland and not on the
Thames, something you should remember that could easily change.
Made in 1965,
commissioned by the BBC following the success of Culloden, but banned from TV
screens for 20 years, which in it self smells of a conspiracy between the
government and the BBC. I would be the first to admit that it’s a very hard
watch but that’s no excuse not the to show this very important documentary
style movie which is even more relevant today within 2018’s political
atmosphere. Perhaps we ‘the public’ could not be trusted with such a horrifying
scenario that when a nuclear war takes place we would all die, and not always
very quickly and certainly in pain.
In 1966 it was decided
to educate the Establishment with a number of private screenings at the
National Film Theatre in London but still the mass population was kept well
away. That was until public pressure and a parliamentary motion led to U-turn
and the film was granted a limited release via the British Film Institute.
Peter Watkins received no
monetary reward from the eventual wider distribution of the film or from its
subsequent DVD release even though it did win the Academy Award for the Best
Documentary Feature in 1967.
Watkins film is not an
historical artifact and should not be viewed as such, its a warning given out
in the 1960’s for what could happen anytime in the future if the authoritarian
establishment don’t get their act together - and it certainly doesn’t look that
their going too any time soon.
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