International Uranium Film Festival

Festival Program

3.00 PM / INTRO

3:15 PM - ATOMIC BAMBOOZLE: THE FALSE PROMISE OF A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

USA, 2023, Director Jan Haaken, Documentary, 47 minutes

As pressure mounts in the US to meet net zero carbon goals, the nuclear power industry makes its case for a nuclear “ renaissance” to solve the climate crisis. In place of the highly costly reactors that have been shut down across many regions of the country, investors began in the early 21st century to promote small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) as a technological solution.

ATOMIC BAMBOOZLE follows anti-nuclear activist Lloyd Marbet and attorneys Greg Kafoury and Lauren Goldberg as they draw lessons from the decades-long fight to shut down the Trojan Nuclear Power plant in Oregon and expose current campaigns to revive the industry. Climate activist Cathy Sampson-Kruse (Waluulapum member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation) points to the buried legacy of atomic weapons production and nuclear power generation at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State and to its devastating impacts on tribal communities. University of British Columbia professor M. V. Ramana, a physicist and internationally recognized scholar on nuclear power, traces the history of nuclear power generation from the 1950s to the present and takes up four main problems– costs, accidents, waste and proliferation–and shows how the industry continues to deny or disavow these persisting problems in the much heralded generation of ”new nuclear.” Director Jan Haaken, a psychologist, brings to this history of atomic bamboozling an attentiveness to the psychological ploys of the industry. https://www.atomicbamboozle.com

Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and documentar filmmaker. From refugee camps, war zones and abortion clinics to drag bars, dairy farms and hip-hop clubs, her documentary films focus on people carrying out stressful jobs on the social margins and in liminal spaces. 

4:00 pm - HOW FAR FROM GROUND ZERO

United States, 2022, Director Brian Cowden, Production LABRATS, Documentary, 30 min.

How Far From Ground Zero shows the Nuclear Testing prgrams across the world and the impact on the indigenous communities, the veterans who took part and the civillians. This documentary is one of the most powerful ever produced to raise awareness of the testing program. www.labrats.international

THE NUNS, THE PRIEST, AND THE BOMBS

USA, 2018, Helen Young: Writer/ Producer/ Director, Roger Schulte:

Associate Producer/Editor, Documentary, 88 minutes.

It is considered the most serious security breach in the history of America’s nuclear weapons infrastructure. In July 2012 three intruders broke into the Y-12 National Nuclear Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee – known as America’s “Fort Knox of Uranium”. Y-12 stores enough highly enriched uranium to make some 10,000 nuclear bombs. The break-in, sent shock waves throughout the U.S. Government, when law enforcement discovered the intruders were an 82-year-old Catholic nun and two fellow peace activists. The trio succeeded in penetrating the heart of America’s nuclear stockpile through the sheer power of their deep conviction that nuclear weapons are immoral… and a pair of bolt cutters. Their dramatic protest, known as a Plowshares action, was designed to raise public awareness on the existential threat nuclear weapons pose to humanity.

The film follows the federal criminal trial against Sr. Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, the three activists who were charged with sabotage for their protest at Y-12. It also traces the events leading up to the Y-12 action, and profiles a community of peace activists who, for decades, have been willing to risk long prison sentences, and even death, in an ongoing campaign to move the world away from the nuclear brink. Plowshares is derived from an injunction by the Prophet Isaiah in the Bible’s Old Testament, “They Shall Beat Their Swords into Plowshares” -a call to transform the weapons of war into instruments for the creation of good. https://nunspriestsbombsthefilm.com

6:10 pm - 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/

Q & A

7:00 pm - BURIAL (Kapinynas)

Lithuania/Norway, 2022, Director Emilija Škarnulytė, Producers Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė, Elisa Fernanda Pirir, 60 minutes, In Lithuanian and English with English subtitles.

A python slithers and curls over the abandoned control room of “Chernobyl’s Big Sister” - the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania - interpreting the plant's radioactive core as an unleashed monster, one that will slither through time for millions of years. From Etruscan ruins and sunken cities to the most modern of underground repositories, artist and director Emilija Škarnulytė examines different ways in which humanity has attempted to bury the immortal. Burial is a gentle meditation on nuclear waste that examines burial traditions, and material and ritual heredity as it traces fresh and old scars that have been left on our geographical and cultural landscapes. https://www.justamoment.lt/burial