Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and Media

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and Media

Power, Imagination, and Reality in the First Decade of Peter Watkins Cinema

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
1 Ph.D. Student in Art Research, Kish International Campus, University of .Tehran, Iran
2 Full Professor, Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran (Corresponding Author)
3 Associate Professor, Faculty of Performing Arts and Music, Fine Arts Campus, University of Tehran, Iran
10.22034/jiscm.2020.248465.1138
Abstract
Cinema as “Art” and “Media” affects social actions and for this nature, it has been used and misused by powers. Their main tendency is unification, manipulation, and domination over the destiny of cinema and the whole process of shaping the filmmaker and his/her cinema. This is done through a vast set of social, political, economic, cultural, and individual powers. But cinema as artistic imagination is in relation to reality and representation. Thus, in the dialectic between cinema as the art of imagination and cinema as the skill of media manipulation, the boundaries are obscure and uncertain, and the work of some filmmakers has led to a different dialectic between reality and representation. The cinema of Watkins is explicit in its fight against this hegemonic system. He started from the amateur cinema with an exceptional ingenuity and after entering professional cinema he was censored and marginalized due to his independence from the mainstream. This article studies the first decade of his work with a documentary method to show the mechanisms of these two dialectics as much as possible. The findings indicate that Watkinsian imagination tries to improve reality and in an experimental process Watkins builds a political, social, and human cinema through the problem-based attitude; participation of ordinary people; efforts of eliminating hierarchical filmmaking; bringing awareness and education before catastrophic incidents; emphasis on film-itude of a film; fluidity in time and space; transparent expression of personal opinions; distancing from dominant narrative form; and creating a context of an agreement with the audience.
Keywords

-استم، رابرت (1397).  مقدمه‌ای بر نظریة فیلم. (مترجم: گروهی از مترجمان به کوشش احسان نوروزی). تهران: انتشارات سورة مهر. پژوهشکدة فرهنگ و هنر اسلامی.
-بوردیو، پیر (1394). دربارة تلویزیون و سلطة ژورنالیسم. (مترجم: ناصر فکوهی). تهران: انتشارات فرهنگ جاوید.
-فکوهی، ناصر (1396). بوردیو و میدان دانشگاهی. تهران: پژوهشکدة مطالعات فرهنگی و اجتماعی.
-فکوهی، ناصر (1397). دانشگاهی که بود... تهران: پژوهشکدة مطالعات فرهنگی و اجتماعی.
-کرونین، پال (1397). سر کلاس با کیارستمی. (مترجم: سهراب مهدوی). تهران: انتشارات نظر.
-Castoriadis, Cornelius (1975). The Imaginary Institution of Society. (Electronic version) Assessment (Vol. 6). https://doi.org/10.1086/229115
-Chomsky, Noam (1997). Media Control: The spectacular achievements od propaganda. (Electronic version)
-Debord, Guy; Knabb, Ken (1995). The Society of Spectacle. (Electronic version)
-Gomez, Joseph. A (1979). Peter Watkins. Twayne Publishers. USA.
-MacDonald, Scott. and Watkins, Peter (1982). An Interview with Peter Watkins, Journal of the University Film and Video Association, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 47-55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686901
-Metz, Christian (2016). Film Language A Semiotics of the Cinema. Introduction to Film. Chicago: Published by arrangement with Oxford University Press. Inc. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-46386-9_1
-Watkins, Peter (2015) Media Criris. Éditions L’Échappée. Paris.
-Welsh, James. Michael (1996). Narration and Authorship in the Cinema of PETER WATKINS. University of Kansas. https://doi.org/10.16953/deusbed.74839
-Welsh, James. Michael (1986). Peter Watkins: a guide to references and resources. G.K. Hall & Co. USA.
-Ritzer, George (2007). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. The Reviewer’s Guide to Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315755649-6