SPOKANE (WA)
April 3 & 4, 2024

The Magic Lantern Theater1

In memory of Klee Benally .
Navajo / Diné artist, activist and filmmaker.
We are honoured that he created the posterand t-shirt designs of the International Uranium
Film Festival tours in USA in 2018 and 2024.
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INTERNATIONALURANIUM FILM FESTIVAL
The Atomic Age Cinema Fest in Spokane (WA)
April 3 and 4
The Magic Lantern Theater LLC
25 W Main, Spokane WA 99201
509 209-2383

Presented by
Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR)
https://www.wpsr.org
Coordinator: Cheryl McDanielInternational Uranium Film Festival
www.uraniumfilmfestival.org

34FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Wed., April 3rd
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 thehistory 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 Diegochapter. https://vfpgoldenruleproject.org/making-waves/56:15pm
NUCLEAR SAVAGE: THE ISLANDS OF SECRETPROJECT 4.1
USA, 2012, Director & Producer Adam Jonas
Horowitz, Documentary, 87 min.
The term "savage" is used to refer to people fromprimitive cultures, but this documentary shows how
savagery reaches new levels with the advent ofadvanced technology. In the 1950's, the U.S.
conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands,
vaporising islands and exposing entire populations tofallout. The people of Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one of thesetests, 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 incredible
unseen archival footage, this untold and true detective story
reveals how U.S. scientists turned a Pacific paradise into aradioactive 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 birthdefects. 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 Awardof the International Uranium Film Festival.
7:45pmBreak - Panel6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 theradioactive fallout from the Nevada Test
Site. www.backlotdocs.com
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Thurs., April 4th
5:30pmIntro and Welcome / Tribute and Dedication to Klee Benally…
5:45pmATOMIC COVER-UPUSA, 2021, Director: Greg Mitchell, CoProducers: Greg Mitchell and Suzanne
Mitchell, Documentary, 27 min.
The widely-acclaimed 2021 film Atomic
Cover-up is the first documentary toexplore the bombings of Hiroshima andNagasaki in 1945 from the uniqueperspective, words and startling images ofthe brave cameramen and directors whorisked their lives filming in the irradiatedaftermath. It reveals how this historic footage, created by a Japanese newsreel crew andthen 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 ofthe bombings as a dangerous nuclear arms race raged. All the while, the producers of thefootage made heroic efforts to find and expose their shocking film, to reveal truths of theatomic bombings that might halt nuclear
proliferation. Atomic Cover-up represents, at least inpart, the film they were not allowed to make, as well
as a tribute to documentarians everywhere.
“What a great film and original concept. An
absolutely crucial way to understanding all wars.
Don’t be surprised if this documentary is a player at
next year’s Oscars.” Rod Lurie, director of 2020 hit
drama „The Outpost“ and other movies.
“One of 2021’s most important films….A devastatinggut punch. It is a film of quiet and devastating powerthat will bend the knees of even those who thinkthey know everything about the bombings.” Steve
Kopian, Unseen Films
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6:15pm
RICHLAND

USA, 2023, by Irene Lusztig, 93 minutes / https://richlandfilm.com
Built by the US government to house the Hanford nuclear site workers who manufactured
weapons-grade plutonium for the Manhattan Project, Richland, Washington is proud of its
heritage as a nuclear company town and proud of the atomic bomb it helped create.
RICHLAND offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity andfuture on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely examination of the habits of thoughtthat normalize the extraordinary violence of the past. Moving between archival past andobservational present, and across encounters with nuclear workers, community members,archeologists, local tribes, and a Japanese granddaughter of atomic bomb survivors, thefilm blooms into an expansive and lyrical meditation on home, safety, whiteness, land, anddeep time.
IRENE LUSZTIG is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and amateur
seamstress. She works in a space of delicate mediation between people, their pasts, andthe present-tense spaces and landscapes where unresolved histories bloom and erupt.
https://komsomolfilms.com/about/
7:50pmPanel and Q & A with Irene Lusztig
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8:15pm
BUILDING BOMBS (4 K RESTORATION)
USA, 1990, Directors and Producers; Mark Moriand Susan J. Robinson, 55 min, Documentary.
Oscar nominated Building Bombs, in a 2024
Academy Film Archive film restoration, revisits theglory days of the atomic age, its legacy of nuclear
weapons waste, and its troubling questions stillunanswered. Insider stories and rare archival
footage reveal the inner workings of one of theworld’s largest nuclear bomb plants and its toll on
the environment and human hearts. Of historicalinterest, 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.
Restoration Producers: Kirsten Larvick and Robert Judson.
Mark Mori and Susan J. Robinson are
Academy Award nominateddocumentary filmmakers. Mark is an
Emmy Award winning television
producer, President of Single Spark
Pictures, and past Chair of theDocumentary Committee of theProducers Guild of America. He has
written and directed documentaries,
reality series, and specials forbroadcast and cable channels
including Fox TV, HBO, Showtime,
BBC, PBS, Frontline, Discovery, A&E,Bravo, MSNBC, National Geographic,and others. Susan has produced,directed, and written for broadcast, cable, and government media and is an expert inpublic health, risk communication, and community engagement. She specializes in longand short-form environmental and social issue documentaries, in traditional and digital
media forms.
Q & A with Mark Mori and Susan J. Robinson.
1112ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
For 13 years, the International Uranium Film Festval (IUFF) has presented cutting edge fi lms
on nuclear issues around the world, including Brazil, Germany, India, Canada and UnitedStates. Founded in 2010 by the Brazilian social scientist Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and theGerman environmental journalist Norbert G. Suchanek, the International Uranium FilmFestival (IUFF) is dedicated to all nuclear topics and the entire nuclear fuel chain, fromuranium mining to nuclear waste, from nuclear war to nuclear accidents. Since 2016, whenthe International Uranium Film Festival was hosted at the famous Raleigh Studios for thefi rst time in Los Angeles it is also known as Atomic Age Cinema Fest. The next IUFF in Riode Janeiro at the Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio) Cinema is scheduled for May 25 to June
1, 2024. https://uraniumfi lmfestival.org/en
SPONSORS AND CO-ORGANIZERS
Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR)
https://www.wpsr.org
Coordinator: Cheryl McDaniel
cheryl.mcdaniel1@gmail.com
FESTIVAL TEAMFounders & Directors
Norbert G. Suchanek
norbert.suchanek@uraniumfilmfestival.org
Márcia Gomes de Oliveira
uraniofestival@gmail.com
www.uraniumfilmfestival.org
Libbe HaLevy
Ambassador of the International
Uranium Film Festival to the USA
www.nuclearhotseat.com

The festival team kindly ask for donations and any support tomake the film screenings a big success and that theInternational Uranium Film Festival can continue. A big thankyou to all of our supporters. Donate via PayPal.

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KEEP URANIUM IN THE GROUND!
www.uraniumfilmfestival.org
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