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25-541: Punishment Park is a 1971 American pseudo-documentary drama film written and directed by Peter Watkins . The setting is of a British and West German film crew following National Guard soldiers and police as they pursue members of a counterculture group across a desert. In 1970, the Vietnam War is escalating and President Richard Nixon has just decided on a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia . Faced with

50-544: A British director would make a film about American political problems in a time of crisis. The film was heavily attacked when it was released at the 1971 New York Film Festival and Hollywood studios refused to distribute it. In spite of the controversy at the time of its release, the film has received a positive critical reappraisal in the years since. In 2005, The Guardian wrote that "twenty-five years on, Peter Watkins's dystopian nightmare still grips, imagining hippies and radicals getting tortured for quasi-judicial sport by

75-584: A fence to enclose the lake and some of the surrounding areas, and now charges fees for entry to what is now known as the El Mirage Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Recreation Area. It is a popular filming location for automobile commercials. Permits for the Recreation Area can be purchased on-site, at local retailers and online. Annual permits are $ 90, weekly permits are $ 30, and daily permits are $ 15. Private aircraft may still land on

100-688: A growing anti-war movement , President Nixon decrees a state of emergency based on the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which authorizes federal authorities to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security". Members of the anti-war movement, Civil Rights Movement , and the feminist movement , as well as conscientious objectors and members of the Communist Party , mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at capacity,

125-419: A half weeks to shoot. The "newsreel" quality of the film was enhanced by desaturating the color and removing the traditional hard edge of the image through the use of Harrison diffusion filters. The total production cost was only $ 95,000, including a transfer from 16mm to 35mm. One of Watkins' intentions for the film was to provoke strong emotional and intellectual responses. Few people had impartial reactions to

150-460: A pseudo-documentary newsreel which appeared within his 1941 film Citizen Kane , and he began his 1955 film, Mr. Arkadin , with a pseudo-documentary prologue. Peter Watkins has made several films in the pseudo-documentary style. The War Game (1965), which reported on a fake nuclear bombing of England, was seen as so disturbingly realistic that the BBC chose not to broadcast it. The film won

175-548: Is located about 9 miles (14 km) west-northwest of the town of Adelanto and 10 mi (16 km) north of Highway 18 in San Bernardino County . The dry lake, at an elevation of 2,840 ft (870 m), is approximately 6 mi (9.7 km) long. Formerly open to all visitors, it has been a popular spot for many activities ranging from gyrocopter and ultralight aircraft operations to automobile racing. The Bureau of Land Management has installed

200-506: Is no way to win the Punishment Park course as the system controls it from start to finish. The film is an example of a uchronie , or alternate history , and of a psychodrama . It was shot in the observational documentary style using hand-held cameras. Watkins heightened realism by using amateur actors, improvisation , and newsreel camera techniques, but he also had rigid control over editing to guarantee audience involvement and

225-433: Is precisely to cancel the sense of reality, making the real events appear as if they were staged or constructed. Unlike the related mockumentary , fake-fiction does not focus on satire, and in distinction with docufiction , it does not re-stage fictional versions of real past events. Another filmmaker whose work could be associated with the concept of fake-fiction is Gianfranco Rosi . For example, Below Sea Level uses

250-414: Is the notion of “fake-fiction”. A fake-fiction film takes the form of a staged, fictional movie, while actually portraying real, unscripted events. The notion of fake-fiction was coined by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where Is Rocky II?, which uses documentary method to tell a real, unscripted story, but is shot and edited to appear like a fiction film. The effect of this fictional aesthetic

275-461: The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature . Watkins' other such films include Punishment Park (1971) and La Commune (2002). The film Mad Max 2 first frames the story by showing a staged documentary-style sequence of images designed to inform the viewer that what follows is the aftermath of an apocalyptic global war. Related to, and in exact opposition to pseudo-documentary,

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300-517: The US presidential campaign of 1988 to attack candidate Michael Dukakis showed scripted scenes intended to look like documentary footage of men entering and exiting a prison through a revolving door. Boston-based band the Del Fuegos appeared in a 1984 commercial for Miller beer, with scripted scenes shot in hand-held camera /pseudo-documentary style. The band was criticized for selling out and for

325-634: The National Guard". As of 2023, it holds a 92% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes . Pseudo-documentary Orson Welles gained notoriety with his radio show and hoax War of the Worlds which fooled listeners into thinking the Earth was being invaded by Martians. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says this is Welles' first pseudo-documentary. Pseudo-documentary elements were subsequently used in his feature films . For instance, Welles created

350-441: The clear expression of his personal vision. Initially Watkins had a carefully detailed script, but as in his other films, he decided to allow his cast to improvise based on their own instinctive reactions while following a rough outline of sequences drawn up by the director. In his previous films, Watkins had only used improvisation a small amount. Punishment Park was the first time Watkins gave his cast nearly complete control over

375-529: The convicted face the option of spending their full sentence in federal prison or three days at Punishment Park. There, they will have to traverse 53 miles of the hot California desert in three days, without water or food, while being chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers as part of their field training. If they succeed and reach the American flag at the end of the course, they will be set free. If they fail by getting "arrested", they will serve

400-404: The dialogue. On one occasion the participants identified with the situation so completely that the victims actually threw rocks at the pursuers, resulting in one opening fire in return. The panic of the film team, upon believing that the fallen actors had been shot for real, was genuine. Although the film itself is fictional, many of the elements found within parallel social and political events of

425-452: The falseness of the commercial; founding member Warren Zanes said making the ad was a mistake, that their core audience turned away, and the larger audience gained by the exposure did not maintain interest for long. Peter Greenaway employed pseudo-documentary style in his French television production Death on the Seine in 1988. He used fabricated scenes to reconstruct a historic event that

450-505: The film. As Watkins foresaw, this produced debates after the viewings of the film similar to the debates that take place in the film. There were many extremely negative reactions to the film, largely due to the unconventional form or because it was viewed as an indictment against the United States. Some even linked the film to communism, claiming that the film expresses a Communist philosophy. However, many more people were outraged that

475-675: The lakebed. For 50 years the lakebed has been used by the Southern California Timing Association for timed speed runs. The club also operates the Bonneville Salt Flats speed runs. El Mirage Lakebed experiences a desert climate, with cool winters and hot summers. Due to the lakebed's aridity and high elevation , the diurnal temperature variation is substantial. Though summer days can be very hot, summer nighttime temperatures are cool. The lakebed receives an occasional dusting of snow in

500-437: The language of fiction cinema in its rendering of unscripted, documentary material. Of his own work, Rosi said, "I don’t care if I'm making a fiction film or documentary — to me it's a film, it's a narrative thing." The term found footage has sometimes been used to describe pseudo-documentaries where the plot involves the discovery of the film's footage. Found footage is originally the name of an entirely different genre, but

525-440: The magazine Variety , for example, used the term "faux found-footage film" to describe the 2012 film Grave Encounters 2 . The film scholar David Bordwell has criticized this recent use because of the confusion it creates, and instead prefers the term "discovered footage" for the narrative gimmick. Pseudo-documentary forms have appeared in television advertisements and campaign advertising . The "Revolving Door" ad used in

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550-523: The other. Meanwhile, the film crew documents the trial of Group 638 as they argue their case in vain for resisting the war in Vietnam. The first group splinters into one group that refuses to accept the rules of the game and tries to resist with violence, and another group of pacifists that goes on towards the goal. The violent group are all killed. As the pacifists come near the flag they find a group of police waiting for them in ambush; it turns out that there

575-408: The remainder of their sentence in federal prison. European filmmakers follow two groups of detainees as part of their documentary; while Group 637 starts their three-day ordeal and learn the rules of the "game", the civilian tribunal begins hearings on Group 638. The filmmakers conduct interviews with members of Group 637 and their chasers, documenting how both sides become increasingly hostile towards

600-669: The time, such as the trial of the Chicago Seven , the Kent State shootings , police brutality , and political polarisation . Punishment Park was shot in 16mm with a skeleton crew of eight people and only one camera. The set was extremely minimal, using only a tent enclosed within a larger tent for the interior scenes. The rest was shot on location at the El Mirage Dry Lake in California. It took only two and

625-458: Was otherwise impossible to shoot, and portrayed it as reality. Reality television has been described as a form of pseudo-documentary. An early and influential example is 1992's The Real World by MTV , a scripted "reality" show bordering on soap opera . El Mirage Dry Lake El Mirage Lake is a dry lake bed in the northwestern Victor Valley of the central Mojave Desert , within San Bernardino County, California . The lake

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