Oscar-winning British filmmaker Peter Watkins, who lived in Felletin in Creuse, has died

Resident for around twenty years in Felletin in CreuseBritish director Peter Watkins is died Friday October 31 at the age of 90. His family announces it on social networks. Peter Watkins was hospitalized at Bourganeuf hospital. Author of committed and pacifist cinema mixing fiction and documentary, the filmmaker had received an Oscar in 1967.

“He left peacefully in the night” alongside his family according to those close to him. The filmmaker had chose to settle in Felletin for more than twenty-five years according to his son. He first went into exile in Sweden, the United States and Lithuania. His first critically acclaimed film was “The Battle of Culloden” in 1964, which chronicled the massacre of Scottish highlanders by the British in the 18th century. It’s “The Bomb”, a mockumentary about the atomic bombin which imagines the outbreak of a nuclear war between NATO and the USSR, which won him an Oscar. In 2000, he filmed in France “La Commune (Paris, 1871)”, a reconstruction of the Paris Commune, co-produced by Arte.

A discreet life in Creuse

The director Luc Béraud, who lives in Creuse, pays tribute to him on ICI Creuse: “He commands respect, he lived up to his ideas and his commitments, he made an interventionist cinema. He was a very anti-establishment filmmaker, who used a lot of the camera in his hand, to shoot films bordering on documentary.” He did not know him personally, but adds: “He left England to isolate himself in Creuse. He was undoubtedly looking for a sort of anonymity, he wanted to have peace. He was not a show business man.”

In Creuse, he was indeed a discreet manwho never participated in the “Ciné des ville ciné des champs” festival in Bourganeuf and never wanted to meet the organizers, according to Luc Béraud. Quite reserved, he had chose Creuse to live peacefully and in anonymityaccording to one of his Creuse friends. He loved going to the market with his wife, was a fan of French cuisine and enjoyed walking by Lake Vassivière. Regarding local life, he had morally supported the Felletin resource center project according to the mayor.