''Resan'' (Swedish for ''The Journey'') is a 1987

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

Peter Watkins Peter Watkins (born 29 October 1935) is an English filmmaker, documentarian, writer, and Film theory, film theorist. He is known as a pioneer of the docudrama and the mockumentary genres, typically with heavy political content. His films presen ...

, made between the years 1983 and 1985 on several continents, and structured around the theme of

nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission, fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion, fusion reactions (thermonuclear weap ...

, 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 The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

in 1987, but has rarely been seen since. In February 2007, it was screened at the Mexico City International Festival of Contemporary Cinema (

FICCO ''Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival'', or ''FICCO'' (''Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo'') for its initials in Spanish was an annual film festival founded by film producers Michel Lipkes and Paula Astorga in Februar ...

) 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.https://www.filmmuseum.at/en/film_program/scope?schienen_id=1215680368397

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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.

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Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...

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from Peter Watkins' website Films directed by Peter Watkins Documentary films about nuclear war and weapons 1987 films 1987 documentary films Australian documentary films Canadian documentary films Danish documentary films Finnish documentary films Italian documentary films Japanese documentary films New Zealand documentary films Soviet documentary films Swedish documentary films Norwegian documentary films 1980s Canadian films 1980s Japanese films 1980s Italian films 1980s Swedish films 1980s Australian films 1980s Soviet films Russian-language documentary films {{war-documentary-film-stub

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