Peter Watkins: No Shortcuts

Görültü is pleased to announce the release of a major new publication titled Peter Watkins: No Shortcuts, dedicated to the ever-urgent, challenging and critically overlooked work of the late British filmmaker Peter Watkins (1935–2025), in conjunction with the 2026 retrospective of the same title.

Founded in Istanbul in 2025, Görültü is an independent cultural initiative dedicated to watching and discussing films, and supporting new productions. Peter Watkins: No Shortcuts, their first publication, offers a critical re-evaluation of Watkins’s practice as both a maker, theorist and polemicist of cinema—from his theory of the Monoform to his monumental durational projects like La Commune (Paris, 1871) and The Journey.

Made possible with the generous support and partnership of the Watkins estate, Peter Watkins: No Shortcuts brings together an all-new collection of essays by a wide selection of scholars, filmmakers, critics, and cultural theorists, exploring the many aspects of Watkins’s idiosyncratic practice—from the ethics of nuclear representation to the pedagogical impulse that runs throughout his entire body of work—including new historical research and personal encounters with the director himself.

Peter Watkins: No Shortcuts features contributions from Umut Tümay Arslan, Senem Aytaç, Burak Delier, Dónal Foreman, Emma Claire Foley, Leo Goldsmith, Victor Guimarães, Alyssandra Maxine, Merve Şen, Nando Salvà, Thomas Sideris, Julian Stallabrass, Merve Ünsal, and Fırat Yücel. Co-edited by Çağla Özbek and Emrah Serdan, and translated by Murat Güneş, İpek Tabur and Emrah Serdan, the volume includes Watkins’s momentous essay on the Monoform, an introduction by the founding members of Görültü and an afterword written by the late director’s son, Patrick Watkins.