We find ourselves in a year of atomic anniversaries, 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with a strong sense that a resurgent nuclear arms race is underway again. However, another more oppositional date is being marked with this event, 60 years to the day and time since the proposed first transmission by the BBC of Peter Watkins' truly remarkable and deeply disturbing documentary drama The War Game. Charting a (fictional) Cold War escalation of tension up to the explosion of a single megaton warhead over Kent and its appalling aftermath, the film fuses news-style reportage, vérité documentary techniques and dramatisations to devastating effect. Indeed, so powerful was it that it caused the broadcaster and government to withdraw the work, with the BBC declaring that "the effect of the film has been judged... to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting."

Following cinema and festival screenings in 1966, it won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1967 and was finally broadcast on BBC2 on 31 July 1985, in the week before the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Japan. Roger Ebert called it "[o]ne of the most skilful documentary films ever made... They should string up bedsheets between the trees and show The War Game in every public park."

Joining Gareth Evans to discuss the film, and his own hugely influential campaigning photomontage works on these themes from the 1980s onwards, we are delighted to welcome the acclaimed artist Peter Kennard.

Many thanks to Peter and Patrick Watkins. Please visit Peter's website to find his important statements on the nature and intentions of the mass audiovisual media.