Began his career in advertising as an assistant producer and turned to amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. In the mid-60s Watkins was commissioned by BBC-TV to make two feature-length docudramas incorporating a quasi-newsreel style and nonprofessional actors. The second of these, The War Game (1965), graphically portrayed the nightmare of nuclear war and was banned from broadcast. It was subsequently released in theaters and earned a best documentary Oscar in 1966. Watkins enjoyed modest success with the commercial feature film, Privilege (1967), but has subsequently worked primarily in the documentary genre, based in various Scandanavian countries. One of his more recent films, _Resan (1988)_, is a 873 minute (14 hours) epic that addresses such issues as the arms race and global hunger.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Daniel Yates| Françoise | (? - ?) (divorced) 2 children |
| Vida Urbonavicius | (? - present) |
Directs dramatized films with a documentary-like appearance.
Education: Christ College, Cambridge; RADA, London
Father of Gérard Watkins and Patrick Watkins, by his first marriage.
Retrospective at the 42nd Gijón International Film Festival, Spain. [2004]
Browse biographies section by name