Punishment Park

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. Plot The film takes place in 1970. The Vietnam War is escalating and United States President Richard Nixon has just decided on a "secret" bombing campaign in Cambodia. Faced with 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, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security". Members of the anti-war movement, Civil Rights Movement, feminist movement, conscientious objectors, and Communist Party, mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at their top capacity, the convicted face the option of spending their full conviction time 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 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 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 is no way to win the Punishment Park course as the system controls it from start to finish.