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Since 1987, Watkins has worked on a variety of projects related to
The Journey
and he has begun to formulate new projects. His commitment to critique has led him to undertake an extensive exploration of
The Journey
itself. With the assistance of Vida Urbonavicius, he has developed an epic "teaching guide" for the film, a critique of the widespread tendency among filmmakers of all kinds to move on after each film project without considering, in any sustained public way, the meaning and impact of the previous work: to become, in other words, obsessed with production itself while ignoring how this production fits into the larger network of eventsthe way those who produce nuclear weapons focus on each new job at hand, rather than its wider implications. Watkins has also continued to work with community and student groups in Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.
Two interviews with Watkins follow. The first was recorded in Toronto in 1981, soon after Watkins had spent a summer teaching at Columbia University and not long before his Strindberg project collapsed (though, as this is written, Watkins expects to work with a Norwegian student group on a new version of the project in 199293). The second was recorded in Utica, New York, in November 1983 and January 1984, soon after
The Journey
(it was called "The Nuclear War Film" at the time the interview was recorded) had gotten underway.
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Part 1
Watkins:
Let's start with that
Roots
experience I had at Columbia. It was a summer session. There were about thirty-five students, a very interesting bunch. I selected four subjects for us to deal with: two were
Roots
[1977] and
Holocaust
[1978]. Then there was the material we were able to get from the Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University. They've been off-air recording all the major network news broadcasts every night since 1968. For a minimal fee, you can ask them to send you a copy tape of any item of the news, providing you can identify it. [The Television News Archive publishes a monthly index to the evening news
Television News Index and Abstracts
which provides summaries of individual news items. Tapes of news stories can be rented from the Archive. In addition to several thousand hours of evening newscasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC, the Archive includes presidential speeches (since 1970), coverage of political conventions, the Watergate hearings, and other materials]; it so happened that someone had ordered every