Name: PUNISHMENT PARK (1971) — One of the most controversial movies ever made
Start: 2026-01-11T17:00:00-06:00
Location: Arkadin Cinema & Bar

$PUNISHMENT PARK (1971) \u2014 One of the most controversial movies ever made$

“Is this the most powerful protest film ever made? Raw, bracing, visceral and confrontational…feels as vital today as it did back in 1971” – Little White Lies
On October 30, 2025, one day after his 90th birthday, legendary British filmmaker Peter Watkins ascended to that great commune in the sky, leaving behind an uncompromising legacy of socially engaged, politically radical, and formally daring cinema that still stands as a challenge to the narcotizing clichés of mainstream filmmaking. We salute Watkins’ life and work with a screening of one of his most blistering and controversial films, PUNISHMENT PARK, now celebrating its 60th anniversary. Set in an alternate version of 1970 in which president Richard Nixon has invoked the McCarran Act to crack down on anti-war protesters, the film imagines a tribunal in which hippies, Black radicals, feminists, and communists are put on trial for subversion. Once convicted, they’re offered the chance to serve a three-day sentence in “Punishment Park,” a forbidding patch of the Mojave Desert where they’ll be hunted by police officers and National Guardsmen in a deadly live training exercise. If they survive, they earn their freedom. But will anyone make it out alive? In this age of ICE raids, Trumpian fascism, and hostility to dissent, PUNISHMENT PARK is absolutely essential viewing.