Resan

For other uses, see Resan (disambiguation).

Resan (The Journey)
Directed by	Peter Watkins
Written by	Peter Watkins
Produced by	Peter Watkins
Starring	Francine Bastien Brian Mulroney Mila Mulroney
Edited by	Manfred Becker Petra Valier Peter Watkins Peter Wintonick
Release date	1987 (1987)
Running time	873 minutes

Resan (Swedish for The Journey) is a 1987 documentary film by Peter Watkins, made between the years 1983 and 1985 on several continents, and structured around the theme of nuclear weapons, military spending and poverty. Ordinary people are asked about their awareness of these issues.

With a running time of fourteen hours and thirty-three minutes, Resan is the longest non-experimental film ever made. It was screened at the 1987 Festival of Festivals as well as the "International Forum for New Cinema" of the Berlin Film Festival in 1987, but has rarely been seen since. In February 2007, it was screened at the Mexico City International Festival of Contemporary Cinema (FICCO) as part of a retrospective on Peter Watkins. Between April 25 and May 1, 2007, all nineteen parts of the film were screened at the Austrian Filmmuseum in Vienna, Austria as part of a retrospective on Peter Watkins.

Premise

From 1983 to 1986, Peter Watkins filmed Resan in 12 different countries. This 14-hour-and-30-minute documentary, structured in 90-minute modules, is a pacifist plea against nuclear arms. It consists of interviews with families from five continents discussing nuclear weapons, the challenges of accessing reliable information through the media and educational systems, their respective governments' policies on nuclear arms, the consequences and use of these weapons, and the role of mass media in driving the arms race.

As in his earlier work The War Game, Watkins sometimes stages episodes of atomic warfare, emphasizing the lack of protection provided to civilian populations by their governments. The film alternates between real (interviews) and fictionalized (recreations of nuclear attacks) documentary elements, simultaneously reflecting on its own process: a voiceover and title cards regularly prompt viewers to consider the image they’ve just seen, its duration, and how it was edited, creating a film that analyzes itself as it unfolds. Every television network Watkins approached ultimately refused to broadcast it.

See also

• List of longest films

Further reading

• Watkins, Peter (1988). Boken om Resan (in Swedish). Pax. ISBN 978-91-85678-42-6.
• Watkins, Peter; MacDonald, Scott; Welsh, James Michael; Ken Nolley; Mary Ann Youngren; Gregg B. Walker; Catherine Collins; Willamette University (1991). Peter Watkins' The journey: a film in the global interest. Willamette University.

External links

• Resan at IMDb
• Brief review at the Chicago Reader
• information about the film from Peter Watkins' website