'Don't forget to look into the camera!’: Peter Watkins' approach to acting with facts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article will examine the work of radical docudrama director, Peter Watkins (director, Culloden and The War Game). In many ways, Watkins is the father of modern docudrama. Working at the BBC in the early to mid 1960s, he pioneered the concept of dramatised productions shot in a documentary vérité style which would prove hugely influential to a generation of docudrama makers such as Ken Loach. Throughout his career, however, Watkins consistently preferred to work with non-professional actors using a form of ‘community filmmaking’ with the public where, increasingly, as his career progressed, performers were encouraged to undertake extensive on-set improvisation. Based on the author's first-hand observations of the director at work on the set of his last major production, La Commune (Paris 1871), this article will explore the strengths as well as some of the potential pitfalls of Watkins' distinctive approach to ‘acting with facts’.