THE JOURNEY
dir. Peter Watkins, 1987
Sweden, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, USSR, Mexico, Japan, Scotland, Polynesia, Mozambique, Denmark, France, Norway, and West Germany, 873 min
In multiple languages with English subtitles.
TICKETS
Pricing: $20 for the whole film ($10/day) or $5 for each screening (available at the box office only)
SATURDAY, MARCH 29
Part 1 (eps. 1-3), approximately 140 min: 1:00-3:40
Part 2 (eps. 4-6), approximately 135 min: 4:00-6:15
Part 3 (eps. 7-9) approximately 135 min: 7:15-9:30
SUNDAY, MARCH 30
Part 4 (eps. 10-12), approximately 137 min: 1:00-3:15
Part 5 (eps. 13-15), approximately 150 min: 4:00 – 6:30
Part 6 (eps. 16-19), approximately 194 min: 7:30-10:45
Against a great evil, a small remedy does not produce a small result; it produces no result at all…
Long underseen due to its towering length and the density of its political ambitions, Peter Watkins’ 14 1/2-hour documentary THE JOURNEY is a powerful work of political philosophy. Originating as an anti-nuclear-war film and a followup to Watkins’ early film THE WAR GAME (1965), the project steadily grew to encompass a myriad of interconnected issues underpinning the poor state of human civilization.
Spread across 19 chapters that continually criss-cross the globe, THE JOURNEY is a provocative pedagogical tool that stands in stark contrast to the dominant hegemonic ideologies that define Watkins’ concept of the monoform. We’ll be presenting the entire film in one weekend, spread across two days, with series passes available in advance and individual tickets to each section available at the door.
The 14½ hours of The Journey are organized into an immense filmic weave that includes candid discussions with “ordinary people” from many countries; community dramatizations; a variety of forms of deconstructive analysis of conventional media practices; presentations of art works by others; portraits of people and places; and a wealth of specific information about the knot of contemporary issues that includes the world arms race and military expenditures in general, world hunger, the environment, gender politics, the relationship of the violent past and the present, and, especially, the role of the media and of modern educational systems with regard to international issues …
The more one fully attends to The Journey, the more the coherence of its vision becomes apparent. At first, the film seems to jump abruptly from one place and time to another, but by the end of the film, Watkins has made clear a belief that has been one of the foundations of all his work: that fundamentally, all places are simultaneously distinct and part of one place; all times are special and part of one time; all issues are important for themselves and as parts of a single, interlocking global issue. The Journey creates a cinematic space in which the viewer’s consciousness circles the earth continually, explores particular families and places, and discovers how each detail ultimately suggests the entire context within which it has meaning. […] Watkins’ film develops in the direction not of narrative climax and resolution, but of an expanded consciousness of the world …
—Scott MacDonald, “Avant-Garde Film Motion Studies”