Peter Watkins' astonishing pseudo-documentary comes blistering onto the screen in this long overdue re-release of his 1971 classic. Punishment Park tells the bleak story of a section of society whose political and social beliefs have landed them in a courtroom, facing ill-defined charges of hostilities against the state. Once found guilty, an inevitability I'm afraid, they face the choice of spending 20-odd years in prison or, and alarm bells should be ringing right about now, 4 days in Punishment Park. Watkins uses the character of an English journalist covering what goes on at the eponymous Camp to narrate the situation and the social context. From the opening lines where the court sets out the legislative authority under which they operate (frighteningly similar to the Patriot Act in its connotations), legitimising what follows in the eyes of the State, the films relevance to todays 'Amerika' is startling. An bleak Orwellian fable, with no discernible easy answers or political loyalties; just an overriding fear of the increasing authoritarianism in the Amerikan empire...