Director: Geoff Bowie
National Film Board of Canada. 2001. $39.95
Length: 76 minutes
Audience: Secondary, Post-Secondary
Topics: documentary filmmaking, global media

Documentary filmmaking has enjoyed a boom recently, fuelled by audiences seeking an alternative to infotainment and by a proliferation of TV channels. But the dictates of television's 'universal clock' imposes a straightjacket of theme and running-time restrictions on television documentaries. The rebel resisting this uniformity is Peter Watkins. In this film we watch the British filmmaker in Paris shooting La Commune, a film on the bloody insurrection that shook the French capital in 1871. On the set, 200 people come and go, the cast members adapting their roles to their own personalities.

Could there be an alternative to standardized broadcasting, produced to sell to the maximum number of countries? Can we reverse the trend and impose a true diversity of choice in TV? Perhaps we can do it by reviving the spirit of resistance that drove those rebellious Communards of 1871. (Some subtitles.)

The Universal Clock can be ordered online from the National Film Board.