Bear Mountain Nation Punishment Park: Film Analysis

PETER WATKINS : Well after all the planning in the preproduction, we started filming between August and September 1970, in the San Bernadino desert about one hundred or so kilometres from Los Angeles. However, in the film we say this is the set of the Bear Mountain Nation Punishment Park in California. The scenes in the film are cross cut between a large military tent on the edge of the park, where dissidents are judged and sentenced by a civilian emergency tribunal - and the desert, where we follow a group of convicted dissidents are carrying out their sentences of having to cross the sixty miles of harsh terrain in the extreme heat to reach the American flag at the end. While under pursuit from the law enforcement officers.