Art meets nuclear weapons, Hibakusha and G20 Summit!
Rio de Janeiro is hosting the G20 Summit now in November 2024. And the city will be the epicenter of global diplomacy under the theme “Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet.” And the question of nuclear disarmament is part of the G20 side events.
For that the
Instituto Bienal Amazônia (IBA) and
Saphira & Ventura have invited the
International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) to show atomic movies during the G20 Events and to be part of a documentary covering the summit with David Lynch as executive director. Between November 12 and 20, 2024, at Parque das Ruínas, in Santa Teresa, the Uranium Film Festival will be one of the highlights of the events “G20 – Dialogues for the Planet”. And the festival will show outstanding films on and nuclear arms to stimulate nuclear disarmament. No More Hibakusha and no more Nuclear Weapons!
ATOMIC BOMBS ON THE PLANET EARTH
by Peter Greenaway
The Netherlands, 2011, 12 min, Art & Experimental documentary, Language: Multilingual, Director: Peter Greenaway, Video Design Irma de Vries, The sound design by Huibert Boon, Producer Change Performing Arts,
www.changeperformingarts.com
Synopsis: Very surprisingly from 1945 to 1989 - there have been 2201 atomic bombs dropped on the planet Earth - an astonishing number of atomic bombs implying huge destruction and fall-out. The film shows evidence of every bomb explosion documented with the nation responsible, the date and location, the force and the height about earth or sea level in a relentless build up of accumulating destruction that is both awe-inspiring and dreadful in the true biblical sense of the phrase - full of dread.
"Hors Concours for Peter Greenaway for reminding us of something we have tended to forget, or maybe even not to know: that 2,201 atomic bombs have been exploded on, within, or over our own home planet - which, from Earth's point of view, are not atomic tests at all but preemptive nuclear strikes. Greenaway creates an infernal cinematic aesthetic to convey this truth. Using 25 screens at once, Atomic Bombs on Planet Earth overwhelms the viewer's field of vision with dazzling cascades of poison fire punctuated by percussive sounds and eerie sonics to convey the reckless enormity of the many Bombs humans exploded not all that long ago. The grid of screens gives rise to multiples of every blast a dozen times or more and staggers clips to make them tumble downscreen, slantwise, in coruscating tides. By the time the razzle-dazzle's over, Greenaway has delivered more fireballs than any viewer will be able to absorb - and more than any living planet may be able to sustain. The first Trinity blast appears several times as Robert Oppenheimer provides the film's voice-over with words repeated like a mantra: "Some laughed - Some cried - Most remained silent." These are hardly words of wisdom from the father of the Bomb... and half a century on, in the absence of anything like sage words on nuclear weapons, we get what's coming to us: an experimental documentary impossible to forget that triggers in our collective brain an atomic migraine of criminally insane proportions whose energies go deeper and are destined to last longer than our own DNA." Robert Del Tredici for the Uranium Film Festival Jury
NUCLEAR SAVAGE: THE ISLANDS OF SECRET PROJECT 4.1
by Adam Horowitz
Director Adam Jonas Horowitz, USA, 2012, 87 min, Documentary, English, Spanish subtitles. www.nuclearsavage.com
Synopsis: Adam Jonas Horowitz shot his first film in the Marshall Islands in 1986, and was shocked by what he found there, in this former American military colony in middle of the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive coconuts, leaking nuclear waste repositories, and densely populated slums were all the direct result of 67 Cold War U.S. nuclear bomb tests that vaporized islands and devastated entire populations. Twenty years later, Adam returned to these islands to make this award winning shocking political and cultural documentary exposé titled 'Nuclear Savage;' a heartbreaking and intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for dignity and survival after decades of intentional radiation poisoning at the of the American government. Relying on recently declassified U.S. government documents,devastating survivor testimony, and incredible unseen archival footage. This untold and true detective story reveals how U.S. scientists turned a Pacific paradise into a radioactive hell. Marshall islanders were used as human guinea pigs for three decades to study the effects of nuclear fallout on human beings with devastating results. Nuclear Savage is a shocking tale that pierces the heart of our democratic principles.
Director's Statement: “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." Adam Horowitz
"Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1 is an extraordinary documentary, heartbreaking and intimate, incredible and shocking. It focuses on atomic testing conducted by the United States near the Marshall Islands in the 1940s and 1950s and the secret human radiation experiments they conducted which were revealed through the release of formerly classified government documents. It is a true detective story that relies on recently declassified U.S. government documents, heartbreaking survivor testimony and previously unseen archival footage." Uranium Film Festival Jury
Dance Performance "It's Not the End" (Não é o Fim) - Cancelled
Specially developed for the Uranium Film Festival 2024, the performance "It's Not the End",
composed of 26 students, between 15 and 17 years old, invites the audience to reflect on the resilience of the indigenous people of tropical forest.
Performed by the Motirõ Class of the Technical Course in Dance of the Adolpho Bloch State Technical School - ETEAB FAETEC,
coordinated by Rosane Campello and Luciana Carnout. Performance in the external courtyard of Glória Maria Park.
"For me, the Uranium Film Festival is the space where silent voices can be heard and their speeches reflected in us as artists!"
Manuela Marques Pessoa, 17 years old, student of the Technical Course in Dance of ETEAB FAETEC.
BUILDING BOMBS - 4 k Restoration
by Mark Mori, Susan J. Robinson and Kirsten Larvick,
USA, 1989/2024, Directors and Producers Mark Mori and Susan J. Robinson, 4K Restoration Kirsten Larvick, 55 min,
Documentary, English, Portuguese subtitles
Academy Award nominated Building Bombs, in a new 4k film restoration, revisits the glory days of the atomic age, its legacy of nuclear weapons waste, and its troubling questions still unanswered. Insider stories and rare archival footage reveal the inner workings of one of the world’s largest nuclear bomb plants and its toll on the environment and human hearts. Of historical interest, the film sparked a movement by ordinary people and rock stars that changed U.S. national policy. With the abandonment of nuclear treaties by the world’s superpowers and call for the use of nuclear weapons, Building Bombs provides key insights and impetus to tackle these issues for audiences today.
TRAILER
Mr. Morita (O SR. MORITA)
by Roberto Fernández
Argentina/Brazil, 2016, Director and Producer Roberto Fernández, 25 min, Documentary, Portuguese.
On March 2, 1924, in the rural area of Hiroshima, Mr. Morita was born. It was a difficult delivery. The doctor thought the child was dead because he was not breathing. He put the child in a corner of the room and smoked a cigarette. But his father did not believe the doctor's words, he took the child and hit the child's bottom and the child started to breathe. On August 6, 1945, the USA drops an uranium atomic bomb in the city of Hiroshima. Young Morita was there, serving the city as a policeman. Miraculously he survived the nuclear bombing of his city. And after living hell on earth, he moved to Brazil and started working for peace in the world, founding the Hibakusha Brazil for Peace Association, in São Paulo.
TRAILER
ATOMIC COVER-UP
by Greg Mitchell
USA, 2021, Director: Greg Mitchell, Co-Producers: Greg Mitchell and Suzanne Mitchell,
Documentary, 52 min, English with Portuguese subtitles
The widely-acclaimed 2021 film Atomic Cover-up is the first documentary to explore the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 from the unique perspective, words and startling images of the brave cameramen and directors who risked their lives filming in the irradiated aftermath. It reveals how this historic footage, created by a Japanese newsreel crew and then an elite U.S. Army team (who shot the only color reels), was seized, classified top secret, and then buried by American officials for decades to hide the full human costs of the bombings as a dangerous nuclear arms race raged. All the while, the producers of the footage made heroic efforts to find and expose their shocking film, to reveal truths of the atomic bombings that might halt nuclear proliferation. Atomic Cover-up represents, at least in part, the film they were not allowed to make, as well as a tribute to documentarians everywhere.
ABOUT THE FILM
THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD
by Peter Antony
Denmark, 2014, Director Peter Anthony, Producer Jakob Staberg, Statement Film, Christian Ditlev Bruun, Co-production: WG Film and Stephen McEveety. Docu-Drama with Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, Stanislav Petrov, Sergey Shnyryov, u.a., Docudrama, 105 min. www.themanwhosavedtheworldmovie.com
1983. The Cold War is seconds from exploding. The world holds its breath as the superpowers USA and Russia are arming themselves against each other with thousands of nuclear missiles. On the 26th of September, Russian radars intercept five nuclear missiles on their way to Russia. Stanislav Petrov is commander-in-chief. The decision that would start World War III rests on his shoulders. Should Russia fire nuclear missiles at the United States in defence? 'The Man Who Saved the World' is an epic Cold War thriller that sends shivers down your spine, while also being a gripping story about the man who actually saved the world, and his struggle to get his life back on track before it is too late. “I often get the chance to play a hero. But Stanislav is a true real-life hero.” Kevin Costner
"With his extraordinary master piece THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD, Danish filmmaker Peter Anthony pushed the borders, how documentary can be done and what it might achieve far beyond everything what was known so far. Beginning with his marvelous staged re-enactments of the very heavy situation in which Stanislav Petrov had to decide if he would take the alarm of being attacked by american nuclear rockets for real and if they had to respond or not, continuing with this something in-between of feature- and documentary film, which takes you right from the beginning till the very end, when Stanislav Petrov after decades meets his mother again, into an emotional roller coaster. The most outstanding from a filmmakers view was, how Peter Anthony pushed his difficult main character Petrov to play himself. It was a brilliant way to show the different facets of this man who decided against everything he was educated in the russian army on a purely emotional base, and who was on the other hand unable to speak about what happened with his closest family. After watching this film you realize how close mankind has been to lose our whole planet, how technical systems again and again are not reliable enough to handle neither the military use of nuclear power nor the so-called peaceful, energy-generating-use of it." Rainer Ludwigs, filmmaker and director of the award winning animated documentary „Leonid’s Story".
The International Uranium Film Festival is one of the 25 coolest film festivals in the world according to the MovieMaker Magazine. However we seem to be too cool and contemporary to attract funding by public institutions and big companies. This is where you come in:
Help keep the keep the Uranium Film Festival running. Make a donation today and your support will go directly towards the next editions of the festival.Your donation is most valuable. Each and every donation, no matter how large or small, is most gratefully received, helping to provide us with the funds needed to invite nuclear filmmakers and ensure the Festival remains a cool world-class event each year.
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Contact
Mídia/Imprensa
Márcia Gomes de Oliveira
uraniofestival@ gmail.com
WhatsApp: 5521 97207 6704
International contact
International Uranium Film Festival
Email: info@ uraniumfilmfestival.org
norbert.suchanek@ uraniumfilmfestival.org
www.uraniumfilmfestival.org
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