International Uranium Film Festival

Festival Program

5:30 pm

Welcome. (Handouts) / Tribute and Dedication to Diné Activist, Artist and Filmmaker Klee Benally

MAKING WAVES: THE REBIRTH OF THE GOLDEN RULE

Documentary, 25 minutes

Making Waves: The Rebirth of the Golden Rule - This 25 minute documentary covers the history of the Golden Rule historic anti-nuclear peace boat from her first voyage in 1958 through restoration from 2010 to 2015 and her current voyages. The film maker, James “Seamus” Knight of Caneyhead Productions produced the film during the San Diego Fleet Week protest on October 14, 2017 in conjunction with Veterans For Peace, San Diego chapter. https://vfpgoldenruleproject.org/making-waves/

6:15pm - NUCLEAR SAVAGE: THE ISLANDS OF SECRET PROJECT 4.1

USA, 2012, Director & Producer Adam Jonas Horowitz, Documentary, 87 min.

The term "savage" is used to refer to people from primitive cultures, but this documentary shows how savagery reaches new levels with the advent of advanced technology. In the 1950's, the U.S. conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, vaporising islands and exposing entire populations to fallout. The people of Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one of these tests, and were then moved to a highly contaminated island to serve as guinea pigs to test the affects of radiation on humans for almost 30 years, where they suffered from recurring cancers and birth defects that have affected multiple generations. The documentary is a heartbreaking and intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for dignity and survival after decades of intentional radiation poisoning at the hands of the American government.

Relying on recently declassified U.S. government documents, devastating survivor testimony, and incredibleunseen archival footage, this untold and true detective story reveals how U.S. scientists turned a Pacific paradise into a radioactive hell.

Adam Jonas Horowitz: “I made this film to give the people in the Marshall Islands a voice. They had their land ruined and contaminated. Now the people are living with birth defects. I felt the responsibility to tell this story because people did need to hear it.“ NUCLEAR SAVAGE won several awards and in 2013 the Best Feature Documentary Award of the International Uranium Film Festival.

7:45pm

Break - Panel

8:15pm - DOWNWIND

USA, 2022, Directed by Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller. Executive Producers Matthew Modine and Adam Rackoff. Written by Warren Etheredge and Mark Shapiro.

Featuring Martin Sheen, Claudia Peterson, Ian Zabarte, Patrick Wayne, Mary Dickson, Lewis Black, Joseph Musso and Michael Douglas. Documentary, 95 min.

Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Mercury, Nevada? The latter was the site for the testing of 928 largescale nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1992. The Nevada Test Site is located in Mercury, 65 miles from Las Vegas. Over the 41 years of testing at the Nevada Test Site, 100 atomic bombs were detonated above ground from airplanes, towers, cannons and balloons; 828 tests were conducted underground. Downwind of the test site in the 1950s, a number of Hollywood blockbusters were filmed, including the Howard Hughes epic „The Conqueror“ with John Wayne and Susan Hayward.

Although „The Conqueror“ location site, in St. George, Utah, was more than 100 miles away, the radiation levels there were so high that when Wayne tested them with a Geiger counter he thought the equipment was broken. „Downwind“ tells the stories of people harmed by the radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site. www.backlotdocs.com