WIN: PUNISHMENT PARK On Blu-ray, We Have 3 Copies To Give Away
Punishment Park (Masters of Cinema) is to be released in the UK in a new Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD edition on 23 January 2012. We have three copies of the Blu-ray to give away.
PUNISHMENT PARK (Masters of Cinema) is to be released in the UK in a new Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD edition on 23 January 2012. We have three copies of the Blu-ray to give away. Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexlers Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramers Ice (1969), Peter Watkins film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Giving voice to the disaffected youth of America that had lived through the campus riots at Berkeley, the trial of the Chicago Seven and who were witnessing the escalation of the Vietnam War, Punishment Park was named by Rolling Stone as one of their top ten films of 1971 and has earned many admirers in the four decades since its release. Set in a detention camp in an America of the near-future, Punishment Parks pseudo-documentary style (continuing Watkins subversive innovations with Culloden and The War Game) places a British film crew amongst a group of young students and minor dissidents who have opted to spend three days in Bear Mountain Punishment Park. The detainees, rather than accept lengthy jail sentences for their crimes, gamble their freedom on an attempt to reach an American flag on foot and without water through the searing heat of the desert. The pursuit of Group 637 a lethal, one-sided game of cat-and-mouse with a squad of heavily armed police and National Guardsmen is contrasted with the corrupt trial of Group 638 by a quasi-judicial tribunal. Unlike Easy Riders mythologising of American counter-culture, Punishment Parks uncompromising stance, and its uneasy parallels with Guantanamo Bay, retain a powerful and prescient message in the post-9/11 present. Rarely seen in the UK, The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to celebrate Punishment Parks 40th anniversary with its first ever release on Blu-ray. All you need to do for your chance of winning a copy of the Blu-ray is email contest@obsessedwithfilm.com with the e-mail header Punishment Park. Make sure you leave your full name and address and that you are over the age of 18. Winners will be picked at random and notified in January. SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT EDITION FEATURES: Newly restored high-definition transfer (shot on 16mm, Punishment Park has been remastered from a new 35mm print struck from the restored 35mm blow-up negative held in Paris) 30-minute video introduction by Peter Watkins Full-length audio commentary by Dr. Joseph A. Gomez (author of the 1979 book Peter Watkins) Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing 40-page booklet with two essays and reprints