What next for the
Cinema of Peter Watkins series?
When PRIVILEGE was released on DVD in the USA on 29th July this year, that meant that all the principal Peter Watkins films were done and out. It’s needed some dedication over the last 3 or 4 years, what with having to ease some of the films away from various disinterested rights-holders but is it job done? Not really.
There are some other,
more obscure and just as marginalized Watkins films that really should
also be made available and so, in a bid to be completist about it, we're
trying to find a means to haul these out into the daylight. Well, as it happens, we’ve actually started work on one. That’s
THE JOURNEY, which is
one of Peter’s few dyed-in-the-wool documentaries (although it does also contain come staged sequences).
Peter made THE JOURNEY between 1983 and 1986, travelling from one end of the globe to
the other and building a dense and detailed picture of the nuclear arms race and media manipulation
at the time. The film clocks in at around 14.5 hours – that is, in approximately 19 x 45 minute episodes. So to publish THE JOURNEY on DVD presents a very particular challenge.
First of all, we’re looking at a 5 x DVD-9 set, with each disc carrying
about 4 episodes. Meanwhile we plan to include Peter’s “study guide”
on disc 5. This lengthy and minutely-researched document was
prepared by Peter and his wife, Vida, back in the late 80s and hasn’t
actually been published before. We tracked down an original copy
in Australia and this is currently on its way to
Toronto.
Many thanks to Pat Jessen in Melbourne for helping with this. Quite how it will be incorporated on to the DVD remains to be seen.
The other main issue with THE JOURNEY is how to justify its publication at all. Economically, that is. There’s a need to make it available because of its importance as a Watkins film, of course. After all, he did spend a number of years and, no doubt, much devotion to the film and so it’s arguably the film on which he divested the most energy. We’re not, however, under any illusion that it might be stocked at your local Blockbuster and so we’ll be looking for means to distribute it as widely as possible on a worldwide basis. This will involve putting together NTSC Region 0 discs, selling the limited edition set from this site and also delivering stock to local distributors in the UK, France, Australia and any other countries where we can find individuals and groups who would like to participate.
