After the Big One
1983 · 23m · Canada
Directed by Bob Lower
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, dark
A documentary examining what nuclear attack would mean for the Canadian Prairies — visits to a missile base and government bunker.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
1983 NFB civil defense film about nuclear war on the Canadian Prairies — the most chilling kind of documentary is the bureaucratically calm one. Twenty-three minutes of beige horror is exactly the texture I want.
An NFB-commissioned 1983 examination of nuclear strike on the Canadian Prairies, terrifying through sheer matter-of-fact bureaucratic register — civil-defence filmmaking as accidental horror. The Cold War context gives it durable curatorial value.
23:06 NFB civil-defense documentary about prairie nuclear strike — that government-commissioned bureaucratic flatness, applied to apocalyptic content, creates an accidental horror register more chilling than anything genre. 1.7M views says people feel the dissonance.