Registration now open for NPYM Annual Session, link with detour to Planet RantWoman

Warning: unQuakerly language may occur. RantWoman is confident God can handle it. RantWoman invites readers disquieted by what language comes to comment but readers may instead want to consult their understanding of Spirit and consider other options for dialogue.

For readers who are not down for another wacky excursion to Planet RantWoman, RantWoman generously a shortcut bypassing RantWoman's reflections NPYM Annual Session Webpage 

RantWoman reads from the email announcing the opening of registration for the 2022 NPYM Annual Session:

Registration is now open for North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s 2022 Annual Session.

THEME

The theme for this year is Deep Hope in Optimystical Times and our Friend in Residence is Carl Magruder, palliative care chaplain and “cradle Quaker” from Pacific Yearly Meeting.  This is a time when we need to hear about “deep hope,” to be reminded that the Spirit is present and at work among us, and that we can listen for what we are called to do.  “What does it mean to live in a multifaith, multiethnic, multicultural society? It means celebrating difference, engaging radical inclusivity, and a continued dedication to Truth-seeking. Hate, bigotry, fear, xenophobia, and nationalism have no place in the beloved community.”

We will be doing that work when we consider several minutes brought to us from different meetings and seasoned throughout the yearly meeting and by quarterly meetings.  

RECOMMENDED READING

Carl Magruder recommends that we prepare for Annual Session 2022 by reading Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion, 1941.  Copies are on the shelves at many meetings and in many Friends homes, and used copies are available so we should be able to borrow or acquire a copy without difficulty and expense.

"Optimystical time?" WTF is that? 

RantWoman, just get registered. Try to trust in that continuing revelation you are always talking about.

"...we can listen for what we are called to do.  ..."

RantWoman, I am pretty sure God would not call you to do  THAT (fill in the blank).

Please FriendS, let us listen further. RantWoman does not MEAN to make people's heads explode. Weill okay, RantWoman MIGHT enjoy a little too much. The point is RantWoman cannot apologize for needs she cannot help, needs that are the same at work--where SOME Friends might have opportunities to learn points useful for living in a single standard of Truth, in faith community, while trying to have fun.

"Multifaith?" 

What do we mean? Do we maybe need some vocabulary lessons here???? 

Ableism anybody? Ableism? Is "multicultural" supposed to cover it? 

Hate, bigotry, fear, xenophobia, and nationalism have no place in the beloved community.

Again, Ableism anybody?

And what happened to looking for that of God in everyone? RantWoman is called to ask for one thing while her inner blowtorch chews on a great moment from awhile ago when a young Friend presumed to tell RantWoman she shouldn't be somewhere, got huffy when RantWoman suggested the young Friend consult with God about the issue and then disappeared from any an all forms of communication with RantWoman. 

Friend, WHAT are you afraid of? RantWoman asks partly because RantWoman has heard comments from multiple directions such as "That Friend gets upset easily." To say the least, the road to "beloved community" is rocky.

But RantWoman, why you gotta put this stuff all over your blog? aren't there such a thing as clearness committees? Apparently not if people RantWoman asks for help either don't know the concept in the first place or wring their hands--FOR YEARS--claiming a clearness committee won't do any good. Or keep citing schedule conflicts. Or repeatedly define problems more narrowly than RantWoman has to. Or in general have LOTS of company about ...

RantWoman, you could just STAY HOME.

And miss all the FUN? Nope. Just add Quakerland to all the places RantWoman gets called, as a very educated white person, to say some version of "...and disability..." Besides, if everyone is lucky, RantWoman may be too busy during this summer to rattle everyone's cages because she will be otherwise consumed  bringing Quaker obstinacy, er centeredness(?), to a project that will ripple far beyond Quakerdom.

Next we get to the suggested reading: A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly. Published in 1941 and now Out of print. 

Surely, it says right here, there are copies in Meeting libraries or homes? 

What if someone is new to Quakers and has no idea even who to ask?

Also, um, Out of print suggests paradoxically available only in print, through multiple used book channels if one wants to own a print version of their own. But, nope, no ebook. No Audio version. RantWoman has not checked every source of audio book she knows of but it definitely is not findable in the one RantWoman uses most often.

Don't Quakers believe in continuing revelation? Hasn't anyone written anything topical since then?

Cue Youtube

Mahalia Jackson: Give me that old time religion

The Heartland Singers: Give me that Old Time Religion

The Macedonia Youth Choir Gimme that Old Time Religion in 1987

The Plantation Singers: Gimme That Old Time Religion

Dolly Parton Give Me That Old Time Religion

Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Mountain Boys Give me that old time religion

John Cash et al Give Me That Old Time Religion

Pete Seeger: Give Me that Old Time Religion

RantWoman What are you trying to say here, like maybe find some way to read as asked? Isn't there someone who might read aloud to you? 

RantWoman is NOT ready to deal with that question.

RantWoman,  Just STOP. The playlist is getting repetitive. Don't you know when to quit? Doesn't this playlist belong more with your buddies the Blind Prayer Warriors? 

--The playlist is NOT repetitive. Listen carefully to the different versions. Extra credit if you recognize the Paul and Silas new Testament reference.

--RantWoman quits when God says to. Since RantWoman can't see people squirming and grimacing, it's prolly gonna take longer than you think it's 'sposeta. 

    Besides, RantWoman has been known to go all Testimony on Equality at odd moments. If one Friend gets to go on, as once happened during Meeting for Worship, about forgiveness, for 2.5+ minutes not counting the time before RantWoman started timing and never say a word about WHAT is to be forgiven or what is to be learned, RantWoman is not even going to apologize for claiming more than a different Friend's wish for 30-second soundbites.

--God is bountiful and usually delivers RantWoman words out loud around the Blind Prayer Warriors. RantWoman is pretty sure they can pray fervently around one large Protestant denomination and around a LOT. And RantWoman is not sure they would go for the Pete Seeger version. Hold that point in the Light.

RantWoman, we get your point about out of print means only in print but continuing revelation does bring search engines and an assortment of bite-sized excerpts.

Quotes on the Friend of Silence site

Friends Journal article 5-1-2011

Heavily documented piece on Emerging Scholars Network

Will these tidbits be sufficient?

Um, RantWoman will try to make the most of whatever bits others digest.  RantWoman has been to grad school and knows how to go on at length. Plus if some other nuggets make it into the Daily Bulletin or into worship sharing queries, that MAY be plenty of spiritual sustenance anyway.

But LOOK. Waggling the search engine just a little bit more yields

 PDF version available through a page called scribd

RantWoman, can you read this? Can you? Can you?

1. Scribd is an interesting looking services. Readers can get 14 days of free reading and downloads and then the services wants $11.99 PER MONTH. cancel anytime before the fees kick in. Word.

2. The actual download is an image file, two book pages per PDF page. The print is too light to be easily readable even if RantWoman invokes one of her blow things up, oops, screen enlargement tools. Text will not be  readable by a screen reader without further OCR and reformatting.

Stay tuned.

Ooh, Ooh. Ooh. Another PDF and one the screen reader even easily reads

From QuakerThomasKelly.org

The screen reader reads it. Now, as to all the other things that make it easy to navigate and easy to match up what one reads with what other read. Ummmm

Fascinating arrangement of 'Hallelujah' performed at Madeleine Albright's funeral, with light for more local memorial matters

RantWoman offers this musical meditation on the occasion of the memorial for the Friend who first recruited RantWoman to serve as Recording Clerk.

RantWoman thinks poetry was more this Friend's jam than music, but music is what RantWoman has.



RantWoman is also meditating about how, somewhere in the course of many memorial intervals, there is just going to be a family fight. 

Michelle Obama n her book "Becoming" writes of what she calls her first and only adult family fight with her brother over their dad's passing. RantWoman is happy to tell anyone who wants to listen or who wants spiritual accompaniment for their own grieving about a couple moments while memorializing RantDad.

So WILL RantWoman grab opportunities that come with the occasion?????

Stay tuned?

What RantWoman REALLY wants to do is send sincere condolences about circumstances she is not supposed to know or care about:

--A friend recently lost her mother.

--A friend's brother was killed in a car crash.

Stuff RantWoman DOES know about.

-A Friend was able to be present at her grandmother's passing. 

--A Friend and two other Friends' mothers are in hospice

There is still PLENTY to figure out about LIFE and RantWoman is clear in the call to keep at it.

Indigenous Assimilation Centers: Reading that IS NOT out of print and IS available in a format accessible independently

RantWoman is seasoning a REALLY GOOD RANT about "radical inclusion" that draws on a book that is out of print and only findable online in a PDF with additional hurdles ahead of an actual download.

In the meantime, RantWoman commends to Friends considering witness with and about indigenous people

Bureau of Indian Affairs report about Assimilation Schools--Part 1 

For everyone with a long list of reasons to be disgusted with the current administration, REPRESENTATION MATTERS. Thank you to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland for bringing this report to light. RantWoman is sorry it is so badly needed.

Worship with Kyiv Friends; also Bringing the truth to indoctrinated Russians | Misha Katsurin

RantWoman is surprised and humbled by worship late late at night Seattle time with Friends in Kyiv.

Tonight: seven Friends,, mostly silent except for a prayer about bombs raining down in eastern Ukraine.

Other bits offered in hope and realism

The Telegraph podcast for 5/23: wheat and possible russian debt

Jacinda Ardern on NZ helping Ukraine

Boris Bondarev resignation

Anthony Beevor on Russian History

Tearing oneself away from....and warming up for Annual Session

 This item has been gestating since March. Just stop there RantWoman.

Speaking (only partly)
of cycles of growth and renewal
as tended by
Nasturtiums in Salad Friend

RantWoman has been bathing herself more than is healthy in the muddied info streams that are war in the social media age. Rather than add half-digested commentary to the media glut though, RantWoman is going to take an early look at ...summer vacation, aka NPYM Annual Session, this year hybrid and moved from Missoula to Monmouth OR. RantWoman feels a separate rant coming on about hybrid but tonight RantWoman is going to offer a few off the cuff comments about items to be seasoned as currently shown at NPYM

RantWoman's initial draft probably needs to pass through a snark and sarcasm filter but in the event that does not occur before RantWoman hits Publish, PLEASE hold this in the Light.

And if the Snark and Sarcasm filters don't take, WILL RantWoman get to a voice of "Criticize to Lift Up, not to tear down."

Here we get to "RantWoman, are you just personally irritated by specific individuals and WHAT is needed to hold growth and learning????"

Okay, okay can we at least aim for "what will help nourish fruitful discussion before and at Annual Session?

Comments offered more or less in order of RantWoman's capacity quickly to say something concise and hopefully constructive.

1. GOOD ON YA to everyone connected with posting things IN FORMATS RANTWOMAN HAS THE TOOLS TO ENJOY and in time for people to read, reflect, and HOPEFULLY have more centered discussion than when everything is handled in a rapid-fire slam-bam who shot Sam rush either in person or in Zoom boxes.

2. Epistle Supporting Amending the 13th Amendment

RantWoman so wants just to celebrate the Light of the young Friends who have done the research behind this epistle. RantWoman wants Friends to consider carefully how to distribute this epistle and how Friends might take up the work this epistle hopes to evoke. RantWoman is VERY humble about "great idea" and "no, I personally cannot add very much work on it to my plate, but please receive the bearers well and listen attentively to their ideas."

3.Minute on Ending hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Excellent Quakerese. It is trite to say nobody ever asks for MORE hate crimes against anyone. RantWoman's bigger problem with this minute based on an informal RantWoman observational census of Asian American and bicultural families she is aware of in local communities is that the minute totally erases these Friends. RantWoman would like to ASK them what wording would matter and then to suggest some kind of addition about we stand with ... in our own Quaker communities and in the larger society. RantWoman does appreciate the specific ally behaviors suggested.

4. Minute in support of the Quaker Statement on Migration

Brief, precise about what action is requested and on-point. So how many hours can discussion take up in Meeting for Business? NO taking bets. Remember Quakers don't gamble.

5. Report of Earthcare Minute revision discussions

Again excellent Quakerese. Still, RantWoman is having some Quaker process hiccups. 

For one thing, RantWoman herself is all about saving the planet with better sidewalks, less driving and more urban greenspace. So far RantWoman has not sufficiently honed the kind of elevator speech that might easily be used to elicit more than blank stares from many people who advocate from a faith community perspective.  RantWoman admits to being a little insufferable in her zealotry about less driving, especially around people who drive more than is remotely fathomable to RantWoman and arrive at meetings all flustered and irritated because of terrible traffic they have just been out contributing to. RantWoman is grateful for some around her who have the gift to hear when RantWoman intones one of her mantras about "safe continuous travel routes for all modes."  RantWoman HOPES she has not reached abolitionist talking to slaveholder level of contentiousness but sometimes RantWoman surprises herself in such realms. This minute is not necessarily the vessel RantWoman would seek for talking about these challenges of hers. 

Next, the Friend who has offered to collect more thoughts a weighty Friend in many rolodexes as living commitment to nonviolence but this Friend is somehow missing important discussions in their own meeting. Although RantWoman is at present definitely not supposed to know or care about the life of this Friends Meeting, RantWoman specifically remembers said Meeting, in conjunction with the opening of new Light Rail stations in the neighborhood approving a minute embracing the new transportation developments as part of Earthcare, the battle against climate catastrophe, etc.  

RantWoman also remembers and invites Friends to find the 2018 or 2019 State of Society report from said Meeting speaking of great grief about the mother whale who carried her dead calf around on her head for weeks before finally doing whatever whales do to release their dead. 

And even before that, RantWoman has vague memory of that Meeting seasoning some kind of Green Congregation minute which disappeared into a minute book never to be heard of again until RantWoman brings it up NOW.

There is, of course, always room and urgency about doing more, more, more. Maybe, please, though, are we allowed to lay off the self-flagellation, honor work Friends are already doing, and see what next steps that might lead to?

6.DRAFT Minute in Support of Indigenous People

RantWoman, say it 10 times. What will help nurture discussion between now and annual session and / or beyond? What will help nurture discussion between now and annual session and / or beyond? What will help nurture discussion between now and annual session and / or beyond?

RantWoman, HOW much of what you are trying to say is personal irritation?

Can we maybe just let RantWoman go off and hold the needed seasoning in the Light?

Word has reached RantWoman, unsolicited and from multiple directions, of a tumultuous Meeting (for worship???) for Business in one Monthly Meeting  where voices who might have had something to contribute to the seasoning were silenced on threat of severe eldering. WTF??? (Okay, rantWoman is relieved to learn whatever tides are roiling organizational equilibrium do not only come from RantWoman. RantWoman is also invoking her much recorded experience seasoning a minute decades ago before the World Trade forum ministerial in Seattle: sometimes minutes that come before larger bodies do in fact come out rather differently than when they started.

How many indigenous elders have been consulted in formulating this minute?

But RantWoman aren't we supposed to work on educating ourselves before troubling those who are marginalized? 

Sure, if our only task is amusing each other without endeavoring to walk alongside people with lived experience or to use our privilege, or to care about doing what is most needed. RantWoman is thinking of a tweet she saw recently by a Black Woman "We asked you to stop killing us and you renamed the pancake mix"

Doctrine of Discovery? Arrrrgggh. RantWoman is not used to seasoning minutes that have entire bibliographies appended. RantWoman can easily fathom an action item in a minute that says "learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery and here are some suggested study materials. Renounce the Doctrine of Discovery??? RantWoman is having a time-warp problem. RantWoman most assuredly is NOT getting how renouncing something from centuries ago translates into doable action in this century.

Also, frankly, sometimes RantWoman needs to put specific faces to issues and minutes. As it happens, the interwebs have brought to RantWoman's attention a young fashion designer of Crow/ Northern Cheyenne heritage named Bethany Yellowtail. RantWoman commends a  journey to Wikipedia or via the search engine of one's choice.

Bethany Yellowtail Wikipedia

RantWoman especially thanks Wikipedia for the information that Ms. Yellowtail's Crow name means "Overcomes through Faith" and her Northern Cheyenne name means "Sun Road Woman."

Ms. Yellowtail's fashion design house currently has a problem about another fashion house copying her designs. RantWoman has no opinion about whether Ms. Yellowtail sits around thinking "Oh, I wish those Quakers would write another minute about the Doctrine of Discover when they could be standing up to help me protect my trademarks!"

RantWoman is having parallel thoughts about tracking the lives of missing and murdered indigenous wormen. Doctrine of WHAT now?

Speaking of discovery though, it seems entirely on point to speak somehow of the fresh awareness of past horrors now being revealed in the realm of "Indian Boarding Schools." RantWoman would like it if a minute wrestled in more detail with that history 

Proposal for P&SC working Groups

Clear structure and accountability. RantWoman has thoughts about one to add but does not think Peace and Social Concerns is the right place for it. RantWoman thinks any standing committee should have the right to create working groups.

There. Now RantWOman has spluttered the first raw chops salad of her thought across the internet. Now it is time to listen more deeply..

 Stay Tuned.

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day?

Here is RantWoman collecting snippets of dialogue for a screenplay. Snippets subject to arbitray updates. Today's festive occasion is Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD #GAAD2022

RantWoman you know that part about your faith community reminding you that you really need a faith community? Has it occurred to you that your faith community might feel EXACTLY the same way?

Yes actually. Next question?

How is continuing revelation going in the world of software:

--RantWoman noticed evolution from one tool to another that seems to be more accessible. The second version has more ads, but guess what: the advertisers don't seem to care whether RantWoman sees their content. So a win?

--RantWoman has no idea what might have evolved from the night that, judging by minutes, both the Clerk and Recording Clerk were completely flummoxed by RantWoman's need to talk about software accessibility. RantWoman is not sure she could have administered the need for continuing revelation more gently.

Can we talk about reasonable accommodations, the kind of courtesies that really really matter whether we are talking about work or volunteer gigs or ...?

Here!. How about a nice screed about capitalism?

Uhhh, how about a Nice @MSFTENABLE Youtable full of #AbilitySummit Vids from the most recent #AbilitySummit

But that's SO corporate.

Of CORUSE it's marketing, and yet actual accessibility does result.

Stefania...from Eurovision to...the Blind Prayer Warriors.

The Eurovision version

RantWoman THOUGHT this version was filmed before the Russian Invasion. Apparently, per the closing titles, it was not.

Official Mother Stefania video by KALUSH Orchestra. To all Ukrainian mothers who go through this horrible war.

227 Ukrainian children have already been killed by Russian monsters, many more injured physically and mentally.

Ukraine will prevail. For every child and every mother. pic.twitter.com/Syd8nMlnuN

— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) May 15, 2022

 Aside from multiple Russia Invades Ukraine war realities streaming out of Youtube, this video where literature brain, therapy brain and conflict resolution brain all have different rules.

RantWoman will leave to readers' wonderment the question of how RantWoman gets from really different videos of the same song to...the blind prayer warriors. As RantWoman has said many times she is theologically multilingual, a perspective which is helpful among the Blind Prayer warriors. Blind Prayer warrior calls start with Praise Reports and Prayer Requests or in local Quaker argot Joys and Concerns. 

Then the praying starts. RantWoman for some reason has never felt clear to explain about Quakers and silence and messages from God. Instead, RantWoman is almost every week given words without particularly stressing about having to insist. Yesterday's plea: "Work on the hears of those doing evil and strengthen the voices of people striving for good..." 

 

You GO University of WYOMING grads AND Administration.

Full Disclosure: RantDad graduated from the University of WY many decades ago. That is neither here nor there as far as this moment, but RantWoman is prone to verbal time travel tonight.

Moments like the students' behavior and the administration's response give RantWoman HOPE.  

RantWoman could live without quite so much sermonizing by BTC but you go to life with the Youtuber you've got...

Rest in Power Frances Noah: A Tribute Trevor’s Gran | The Daily Show

International Uranium Film Festival Live and streaming May 19-29

Extra article: Shameful US history in the Marshall Islands

 In case anyone interested in a specific form earth care needs more nerd cred or would like to hang out with RantWoman and read subtitles and talk about 21st century nuclear issues

International Uranium Film Festival 

Partial text as teaser

RIO 2022

11TH INTERNATIONAL

URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL RIO DE JANEIRO

 

May 19 - 29, 2022 Free live & online screening

Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio) Cinematheque

Avenida Infante Dom Henrique, 85 Parque do Flamengo

 

Online film streaming of selected films starts May 19 (24/7)

www.vimeo.com/showcase/uranium2022(link is external)

 

Festival Program & Catalogue

Download Catalogue

THURSDAY, MAY 19 - OPENING PROGRAM / ATOMIC BOMB HISTORY

 

3:30 pm

 

OF THE SENSE OF THE WHOLE: The Network of Physicist Hans-Peter Dürr

Germany, 2020, Director Claus Biegert, German with Portuguese Subtitles, 103 min. (Not online)

 

5:30 pm

AFTER THE DAY AFTER

USA, 2011, Director Nathan Meltz. Animation, 6 min, English.
TELEVISION EVENT

USA, 2020, Director & Producer: Jeff Daniels, English with Portugueses subtitles, 91 min. (Not online)

 

7:30 pm

TOTEM & ORE

Australia, 2019, Director John Mandelberg, Documentary, 97 min, English, Subtitles in Portuguese.

FRIDAY, MAI 20 - RADIOACTIVE RISKS

 

3:00 pm

TOXIC NEIGHBOUR

Canada, 2021, Director: Colin Scheyen, Documentary, English, Subtitles in Portuguese, 25 min.
SAM AND THE PLANT NEXT DOOR 

Denmark/UK, 2019, Director Ömer Sami, Documentary, 23 min, English, Subtitles in Portuguese 

SKIN DEEP FEAR (PEUR A FLEUR DE PEAU)

France, 2020, Director: Franck Sanson, Documentary, French/English, Subtitles in Portuguese, 55 min.

 

5:00 pm

THE GARDEN

USA, 2021, Director Bill McCarthy, Animation, English, Subtitles in Portuguese, 7 min.
PLAYING WITH URANIUM

Canada, 2020, Director: Daniel Hackborn, Documentary, English, 10 min.

PHOTOGRAPHY & RADIATION

Canada, 2018, Director: Jesse Andrewartha, Documentary, English, Subtitles in Portuguese, 15 min 

TRANSMUTATIONS: VISUALIZING MATTER

USA/Canada, 2021, Director Jesse Andrewartha, Documentary, English, Subtitles in Portuguese, 70 min.

 

7:00 pm

MUSTANGS & RENEGADES

USA, 2020, Director James Anaquad Kleinert, Documentary, English, 127 min

 

SATURDAY, MAI 21 - NUCLEAR QUESTION

 

2:30 pm

NUCLEAR FREE POWER TO THE PEOPLE (ATOMLOS DURCH DIE MACHT)

Austria, 2019, Director Markus Kaiser-Mühlecker, German with English or Portuguese subtitles, 74 min

 

4:00 pm

THE SHADOW PROJECT

Canada, 2020, Director Teresa D’Elia, Experimantal Documentary, English, subtitles in Portuguese, 5 min. 

MIYAKO

USA/Japan, 2020, Directors: Maria Victoria Sanchez
Lara & Ari Beser, Documentary & Animation, Japanese with subtitles in English or Portuguese, 5 min.

ATOMIC COVER-UP

USA, 2021, Director: Greg Mitchell, Documentary, 52 min, English with Portuguese subtitles. (Not online) 

NAMIBIA, BRASIL

Brazil, 2006, Directors: Miguel Silveira and Elias Lopez-Trabada, Fiction, Portuguese, 10 min.
Q&A with Brazilian director Miguel Silveira

 

5:30 pm

NUCLEAR WAR & DISARMAMENT
Conversation and Q&A with nuclear arms expert Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte,

former Brazilian ambassador and former UN High Representative for Nuclear Disarmament Affairs.

 

SUNDAY, MAY 22 - RADIOACTIVE TAILINGS

 

3:00 pm

GREEN WARRIORS / SOUTH AFRICA: TOXIC TOWNSHIPS -

France/South Africa, 2018, Director Martin Boudot, French/ English with Portuguese subtitles. 54 min.
OLD URANIUM MINES, ENDLESS RADIATION (BRETAGNE RADIEUSE)

France, 2019, Director: Larbi Benchiha, Documentary, French/English with Portuguese subtitles. 52 min.

 

5:00 pm

IN THE SHADOW OF THE TUGTUPITE

Greenland, 2020, Director Inuk Jørgensen, Documentary, English & Greenlandic, Subtitles English or Portuguese, 7 min.
GREEN WARRIORS / CURSED URANIUM (l’Uranium de la colère)

France, 2021, Director: Martin Boudot, Documentary, French/English, Portuguese subtitles. 50 min.

THE RETURN OF NAVAJO BOY / EPILOGUE

USA, 2000/2011, Director: Jeff Spitz, Documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 71 min.

 

MONDAY, 23 MAY - URANIUM MINING

 

4:00 pm (Rio time)

ONLINE ZOOM MEETING! INDIGENOUS PEOPLES & URANIUM MINING

Uranium Film Festival will bring together, for the fi rst time in history, Navajo who suffered for more than 40 years because of uranium mining

and its radioactive heritage and indigenous peoples in Brazil who are threatened with a planned uranium-phosphate mine in Ceará.

Language: English, Navajo, Portuguese.

 

THURSDAY, MAY 26 – NUCLEAR WAR & ATOMIC BOMB TEST LEGACY

 

10:00 am

School Screening

BROKEN ARROW. NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN PALOMARES (Operación Flecha Rota. Accidente Nuclear en Palomares)

Spain, 2007, Director: Jose Herrera Plaza, Documentary, Spanish-English with Portuguese subtitles, 96 min.
Q&A with filmmakers José Herrera and Jaime García.

 

3:30 pm

WORLD WAR 4 - THE REALISM CUT

New Zealand, 2022, Director: A.K. Strom, Sci-Fi-Thriller, English with Portuguese subtitles, 87 min.

 

5:30 pm

THE BASEMENT (지하실)

South Korea, 2020, Director: Choi Yang Hyun, Producer: Lee Jieun, Fiction, Korean with English or Portuguese subtitles, 94 min.

 

7:30 pm

ROBOT MONSTER US

Canada, 2014, Director: Lynn Dana Wilton, Animation, no dialogue, 22 seconds.
WHAT TRAVELERS ARE SAYING ABOUT JORNADA DEL MUERTO

USA, 2021, Director: Hope Tucker, Experimental documentary, English, with Portuguese subtitles, 14 min.
CHILDREN OF STRATEGIC TRUST

Marshall Islands/USA, 2011, Director: Stacy Libokmeto, Documentary, English, Marshallese with Portuguese subtitles, 26 min.
SEA GYPSIES: THE PLUTONIUM DOME

 2021, Marshall Islands/USA, Director Nico Edwards, English with Portuguese subtitles, 35 min.

 

FRIDAY, MAY 27 - AWARD-WINNING FEMALE FILMMAKERS

 

3:00 pm

STALKING CHERNOBYL

Ukraine/USA/Bulgaria/Slovakia, 2020, Director Iara Lee, Documentary, English, Russian, Subtitles in English or Portuguese, 57 min.
ATOMIC REFUGEE MOMS

Japan, 2018, Director Ayumi Nakagawa, Documentary, Japanese with Portuguese subtitles, 65 min. (Not online)

 

5:30 pm

UNSETTLING DUST

- Netherlands, 2021, Directors: Tineke van Veen & Barbara Prezelj, short documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 9 min.
THE INVISIBLE ISLAND (L'Ile Invisible / 見えない島)

France, 2021, Director Keiko Courdy, Documentary, Portuguese subtitles, 87 min. (Not online)

 

7:30 pm

BALENTES - THE BRAVE ONES (I CORAGGIOSI)

Italy/Australia, 2018, Director Lisa Camillo, Documentary, Italian with English or Portuguese subtitles, 84 min.

 

SATURDAY, MAY 28 - 35 YEARS CESIUM 137 ACCIDENT & LOST ATOMIC BOMBS

 

3:00 pm

NUCLEAR SAFETY

Brazil, 2019, Director Norbert G. Suchanek, documentary fi lm collage, Portuguese, 12 min.
AMARELINHA

Brasil, 2003, Director Ângelo Lima, Fiction, Portuguese, 4 min. (Not online)

TO NOT FORGET

Brazil, 2022, Director Gabriel Leal, Documentary, Portuguese, 40 min.
Q&A with Odesson Alves Ferreira, direct victim of the accident

 

5:00 pm

JANUARY 66 (ENERO DEL 66)  

Spain, 2022, Director: Jaime García Parra, Fiction/Comedy, Spanish with English or Portuguese subtitles,14 min. 

BROKEN ARROW. NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN PALOMARES

 Spain, 2007, Director: Jose Herrera Plaza, Documentary, Spanish/English with Portuguese subtitles, 96 min.

Q&A with filmmakers Jaime García Parra & Jose Herrera Plaza 

 

SUNDAY, MAY 29 - FESTIVAL FINAL & AWARDS CEREMONY

 

3:00 pm

OUR FRIEND THE ATOM: THE AGE OF RADIOACTIVITY (Notre ami l'atome : Un siècle de radioactivité)

France, 2020, Directed by Kenichi Watanabe, English or French with Portuguese subtitles, 56 min.

 

 4:10 pm

VALLEY OF THE GODS (Dolina Bogów)

Poland/Italy/Luxemburg/USA, 2019, Director Lech Majewski, Ficition, English with Portuguese subtitles, 126 min. (Not online)
Q&A with Director Lech Majewski

AWARDS CEREMONY

with international filmmakers, special guests and "Cachaça Magnífica!“

 

ABOUT THE FILMS (ALPHABETICAL)

 

 AFTER THE DAY AFTER (link is external)

USA, 2011, Director and Producer: Nathan Meltz. Animation/Experimental, No Dialogue, 6 min.

The film remakes a section of the 1983 post-nuclear made-for-TV movie 'The Day After', retelling the story of atomic devastation in a Dada collage-meets-stop-animation style. The film showed atomic bombs reducing humans and animals to skeletons, and a city was blown to rubble.  About his film Nathan Meltz(link is external) says: „ In 1983, when I was 8 years old, my parents had a conversation around the dining room table in my hometown in the northern United States. They debated whether or not to let me watch the made for TV movie called The Day After, which was set to air that evening on network television. They decided that it couldn’t be any worse than letting me watch Star Wars, so that evening I watched the premier of The Day After. The film showed atomic bombs reducing humans and animals to skeletons, and a city was blown to rubble.  For years afterwards, I went to bed praying that I would not be bombed to atomic oblivion while I slept. After the Day After is my attempt to come to terms with a lifetime of fear, distrust, and anxiety about nuclear annihilation by filtering a vision of destruction through my personal visual vocabulary of animated collage-based images. 

 

AMARELINHA

Brasil, 2003, Director Ângelo Lima, Fiction, Portuguese, 4 min

 

ATOMIC COVER-UP(link is external)

USA, 2021, Director: Greg Mitchell, Co-Producers: Greg Mitchell (link is external)and Suzanne Mitchell,

Documentary, 52 min, English, 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.

 

ATOMIC REFUGEE MOMS(link is external)

Japan, 2018, Director Ayumi Nakagawa, Documentary, 65 min, Japanese with English or Portuguese subtitles.

There are many evacuees who had been driven into the poverty after the Japanese government cut off the housing subsidies for those who fled their house after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in March 2011. Kazuko, who fled her house to Tokyo with her two primary school daughters, has to work over the weekend to pay the expensive rent in Tokyo. She is irregularly employed, which means that if she gets sick, it would affect her income. There are still 70,000 evacuees from contaminated area and this is the documentary to address once again, what is the actual revitalization. 

 

BALENTES - THE BRAVE ONES (I CORAGGIOSI)(link is external)

Italy/Australia, 2018, Director Lisa Camillo(link is external), Documentary, 84 min, Italian with English or Portuguese subtitles 

When Sardinian-Australian Lisa Camillo, an anthropologist and film director, returns to Sardinia she finds that large chunks of her homeland are devastated by mysterious bombs. On her journey she uncovers secret NATO bombing ranges. Tests with depleted uranium weapons have been having devastating consequences on the local human and animal population. Lisa joins the islanders’ fight to reclaim their land and livelihoods and, in doing so, she is learning about herself and her roots. “Balentes’ is a Sardinian word indicating ‘a man of valour’, who strives for social justice, defending the weak against the oppressors. Sardinians have always been a warrior people, a fact sometimes forgotten, combatting the many invaders landing on their shores over the ages  with courage and valour. Lisa Camillo(link is external) is a passionate human rights driven filmmaker, anthropologist, presenter and writer. She has directed, produced and wrote award-winning documentaries and films that travelled across the world in several international film festivals. http://www.balentesfilm.com(link is external)

 

Broken Arrow. Nuclear Accident in Palomares (Operación Flecha Rota. Accidente Nuclear en Palomares)

Spain, 2007, Director:  Jose Herrera Plaza(link is external),(link is external) Producer: Antonio Sánchez Picón.

Documentary. Spanish-English with Portuguese subtitles, 96 min.

In January 1966 two American airplanes collided over Palomares (Almería-Spain) and as a consequence, four H-bombs fell to earth. Two of them explode their conventional charge and due to the strong coastal winds radioactive material was scattered over the region. An intensive search started to find the fourth bomb. At the same time the US send troops to begin the decontamination process of the „radioactive“ zone. The narration is strictly told by experts and protagonists and with extraordinary archive film material. Book to the film.(link is external)

 

CHILDREN OF STRATEGIC TRUST(link is external)

Marshall islands, United States, 2011, Director Stacy Libokmeto, Documentary, English, Marshallese with Portuguese subtitles, 26 min.

 When the United States asked to use the Marshall Islands as an atomic testing ground after WWII, they told the islanders it was “for the good of mankind.” In this exchange, the islands were inundated with an average of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years. The American nuclear tests may have ended 70 years ago, but the effects of their legacy lingers in the land and the bodies of the Marshallese themselves.  Filmmaker Stacy Libokmeto is half Marshallese, half American who was born under the tall trees of a mid-sized Oregon town. Stacy moved to New York City to pursuit a Master's in News and Documentary at New York University.

There she produced her first documentary "Children of Strategic Trust," an idea that started as a promise to herself to one day tell this story for the family who could not. Trailer.(link is external)

 

GREEN WARRIORS: Cursed Uranium  (l’Uranium de la colère)(link is external)

France, 2021, Director: Martin Boudot,  Producer: Luc Hermann & Paul Moreira,

Documentary, French or English with Portuguese subtiltes, 50 min.

In Niger, near a huge uranium mine, some residents live in areas that exceed the radioactivity of the Chernobyl Prohibited Zone. In the meantime, in France, citizens denounce the pollution of the largest uranium conversion plant in Europe. Despite the bans, a team of journalists, with the help of scientists, investigate in the two countries and take dozens of samples to learn more about the pollution of the uranium that feeds our nuclear power plants. Their findings will be picked up by the media, trigger a political debate and will be used as evidence for citizens in a lawsuit against a multinational company. Trailer:(link is external) 

 

GREEN WARRIORS: SOUTH AFRICA: TOXIC TOWNSHIPS (AFRIQUE DU SUD: TOXIC TOWNSHIPS)(link is external)

France/South Africa, 2018, Director Martin Boudot, Producer: Premières Lignes, English/French with Portuguese subtitles, 54 min. 

Johannesburg is considered the most uranium-contaminated city in the world. Waste dumps from around 600 abandoned mines sit next to residential communities, blowing polluted dust into homes and contaminating the soil and water supplies. To get a sense of the sheer extent of the problem, Martin Boudot and his team of researchers investigate. Equipped with a Geiger counter, they uncover some dangerous realities. Trailer.(link is external)

 

IN THE SHADOW OF THE TUGTUPITE(link is external)

Greenland, 2020,  Director & Producer: Inuk Jørgensen, Documentary,

Original Language: English & Greenlandic, Subtitles English or Portuguese, 7 min.

A cinematic portrait of despair and anxiety towards an unknown future for the Inuit of the world’s largest island.

The film questions the rationale behind past and future mining prospects in Greenland and how they are connected to a search for identity for the fledgling nation. Trailer:(link is external) 

 

JANUARY 66 (ENERO DEL 66)(link is external)

Spain, 2022, Director & Producer: Jaime García Parra, Fiction/Comedy, Spanish with English or Portuguese subtitles, 14 min.

January 1966 in the south of Spain, a tourism couple is recording themselves in a placid day at the beach. Behind them, some locals decide to cheat on a shepherd, who will play his honor

before the eyes of his beloved in a curious game. Tourists are attracted to the strange game and decide to record it, without being aware of the hecatomb that will happen before the camera.„January 66“ is based on the real atomic bomb accident of Palomares during the Cold War: On 17 January 1966, a B-52G bomber of the USAF Strategic Air Command with four atomic bombs collided with a KC-135 plane tanker during mid-air refueling over the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain at Palomares. Of the four hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried, three felt on land near the small fishing village Palomares in Almería  resulting in the contamination of an at least 2-square-kilometer area by plutonium. The fourth atomic H-bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and was lost.

 Trailer(link is external): https://selectedfilms.com/enero-del-66/(link is external)

 

NAMIBIA, BRASIL (link is external)

Brazil, 2006, Directors: Miguel Silveira and Elias Lopez-Trabada, Fiction, Portuguese, 10 min.

A poetic, childlike approach to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A young Brazilian Namibian tells her father one day after school the story of the girl on the other side of the world who became ill after the nuclear catastrophe that happened there many decades ago. The Japanese girl was only two years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At the age of twelve, she finally contracted leukemia and was hospitalized. There she folds a total of one thousand origami paper cranes. Miguel Silveira's Columbia College Chicago Undergraduate Thesis Film "Namibia, Brasil" is an award winning short film that screened at more than 35 film festivals world-wide including The Cannes Film Festival. Now, thanks to the Uranium Film Festival, it will be screened for the first time in Brazil. Trailer.(link is external)

 

NUCLEAR FREE POWER TO THE PEOPLE / ATOMLOS DURCH DIE MACHT(link is external)

Austria, 2019, Director Markus Kaiser-Mühlecker,(link is external) 74 min, Documentary, German with English or Portuguese subtitles.

Austria is the only country which built a fully functional nuclear power plant and after peoples vote against it in 1978 didn't engage it. The film traces the anti-nuclear-movement in Austria, with all aspects of nuclear power in Europe, showing the history and provides an outlook on the future. As meta-theme the activities of the NPO "Atomstopp" are shown, their fight alongside democratic institutions from local government to EU-offices. So the film shows the very multifaceted topic with regards to technology, health, environment, politics and democracy, public movements and energy policy. Filmmaker Markus Kaiser-Mühlecker(link is external) studied film, video and audio at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg and sociology at the University of Vienna. Since 2005 he has been living and working as a documentary and corporate filmmaker near Linz. „Nuclear free power to the people“ is his second feature length film and received in 2019 the RAGFF Venezia best retro avantgarde documentary feature film award. Trailer: www.kmfilm.at/portfolio/atomlos/(link is external)

 

Nuclear Safety (Segurança Nuclear)

Brazil, 2019, Director & Producer: Norbert G. Suchanek, Documentary Film Collage. Portuguese, 12 min.

Since the Cesium-137 accident in Goiânia, in 1987, we know that radioactive accidents can happen not only in nuclear power plants. The Goiânia disaster was caused by just one abandoned radiation treatment device. However, the use of radioactive materials in our society is widespread and mostly unknown to the public. Radiation devices and radioactive elements are used not only in medicine, but also in the steel industry, in mining and even in the industrial food production, for example. The collage of Brazilian TV reports from 2014 to 2019 on some cases of radioactive devices and materials abandoned, stolen or involved in road accidents show that, 35 years after Goiânia, radiation accidents are still possible at any time and anywhere in Brazil - or may have already happened but remained undiscovered. Radioactivity is invisible.

 

MUSTANGS & RENEGADES(link is external)

USA, 2020, Director & Producer James Anaquad Kleinert, Documentary, English, 127 min. Trailer.(link is external)

Stunning Cinematography highlighting Majestic South Western Landscapes & Ecosystems, featuring Viggo Mortensen, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson and others, this is a film that audiences will resonate deeply with, as our Plight to Protect the Wild Horses mirrors our fight for a Sustainable Future: "Mustangs & Renegades" is a complex web of events woven into the heart of the American west, documented over a 18 year period. It Follows the true & personal account of Film Maker James Anaquad Kleinert as he document’s the Round Up & Removal of America’s Wild Horses. In Revealing the plight of our Wild Horses, James shows how Public Lands in the US are being sold off to the highest bidders exposing the Privatization of US Publics lands by the Brutal Multi National Extractive Industries.

"Mustang & Renegades" is an epic and honest tale of Activism, Passion, Perseverance and Transformation that touches the core issues - The Protection of our Natural Environment, Constitutional, Civil and Indigenous Rights that are massively threatened! The film is based on the Book: No Country For Truth Tellers(link is external) by James Anaquad Kleinert. Film Info.(link is external) 

 

MIYAKO(link is external)

USA/Japna, 2020, Directors: Maria Victoria Sanchez Lara & Ari Beser Producer: Kathleen Sullivan,

Documentary & Animation, English or Portuguese subtitels 5 min.

After 20 years Miyako Jodai returned to the location where she survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki.

Her memories are animated like the Kamishibai story cards she uses to tell her story. Trailer: https://vimeo.com/431257949(link is external)

 

Of the Sense of the Whole: The Network of Physicist Hans-Peter Dürr (VOM SINN DES GANZEN)(link is external)

Germany, 2020, Director Claus Biegert, Production Biegertfilm, Music by Zoro Babel,

Documentary, 103 min, German / English with Portuguese subtitles

Hans-Peter Dürr, as a physicist he followed the footsteps of the world re-nowned Werner Heisenberg. As a peace activist he was torn between his PhD supervisor Edward Teller and peace Nobel laureate Josef Rotblat, both  of them involved in the Manhattan project during World War II. When it became obvious that Hitler would not built an atomic bomb (Wunderwaffe), Rotblat immediately resigned from Los Alamos, Teller stayed and became the "father of the hydrogen bomb". In the early 1950s, the young and naive Hans-Peter from Stuttgart, Germany, stepped into the bomb euphoria in Berkeley, California. It shaped his life.

He became a role model for a scientist with responsibility. TRAILER(link is external)

 

OLD URANIUM MINES,  ENDLESS RADIATION (BRETAGNE RADIEUSE)(link is external)

France, 2019, Director Larbi Benchiha, Documentary, 52 min, French/English, with Portuguese subtitles. 

Many of us do not know or have forgotten: More or less 250 uranium mines were explored in France from 1945 to 2001, resulting in 252 million tons of radioactive waste that remain in the ecosystem. Between 1955 and 1984, 42 uranium mines were explored in Brittany. 26 of them are in the department of Morbihan.  This uranium mining and extraction produced waste that remains harmful until today. The radiation in the people's backyards are 1,000 to 3,000 times higher than tolerable. Filmmaker Larbi Benchiha has followed in the invisible footsteps of this waste in the highly radiant Brittany countryside. Trailer. (link is external)

 

Our Friend the Atom: The Age of Radioactivity (Notre ami l'atome : Un siècle de radioactivité)(link is external)

France, 2020,  Directed by KenichiWatanabe, Production: Kami productions,

Documetary, English/French with Portuguese subtitles, 56 min.

The USS Ronald Reagan cruised into a radioactive cloud from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. Sailors on the aircraft carrier were exposed to radiation. This documentary looks at the event and what came before it.  The film is a historical investigation into the phenomenon of radioactivity. From the Curie spouses to Fukushima, through the history of atomic bombings and nuclear disasters, the film gives meaning to the stories of victims, soldiers and irradiated children, while revealing the lies of the world of the atom. Info/Trailer: www.kamiproductions.fr(link is external)

 

PHOTOGRAPHY & RADIATION(link is external)

Canada, 2018, Director and Producer: Jesse Andrewartha, Documentary, English, 15 min.

Photography & Radiation is a personal journey by visual artist Jesse Andrewartha, who explores the history of the autoradiogram as he creates a new body of work, a series of uranium autoradiograms for the upcoming exhibition “Transmutations: Visualizing Matter | Materializing Vision”. Trailer: https://vimeo.com/253012170(link is external)

 

PLAYING WITH URANIUM(link is external) 

        

Canada, 2020, Director: Daniel Hackborn, Producer: Patrick Borgers, Cinematography by Hannah Joosse, Documentary, English, 10 min.

Playing With Uranium looks at the legacy of the Uranium mines that existed in and around Elliot Lake throughout the later half of the 20th century. The mining executives and shareholders made millions of dollars, while the people who call the land of Elliot Lake home, and the Anishinaabe of Serpent River, are left to deal with the millions of tonnes of tailings that have been left scattered throughout the boreal forest in man-made lakes and dugouts. Trailer: https://www.hannahjoosse.com/documentary/uranium(link is external)

 

ROBOT MONSTER US(link is external)

Canada, 2014, Director & Producer: Lynn Dana Wilton, Animation, no dialogue, 22 seconds.

 In a battle for supremacy, who will prevail? "Robot Monster Us" is intended to be a succinct comment on how humans wreak such damage to our environment, there's nothing invading giant monsters or robots could do to top it.  While nuclear power doesn't emit carbon dioxide in the same manner of fossil fuels, the "smoke" (sand animation) is meant to represent the pollution that frequently goes 'under the radar' such as radiation, the results of mining & refining uranium, and the costs of transporting & sequestering the radioactive waste. Website(link is external) 

 

SAM AND THE PLANT NEXT DOOR (link is external)

Denmark/UK -  2019, Director Ömer Sami, Documentary,  English with Portuguese subtitles. 23 min.

Growing up in the shadows of Britain’s biggest new nuclear power plant, Hinkley Point C, eleven-year-old Sam is worried about what it means for the world around him and must decide what kind of person he wants to be. Drifting between his daily life and dreams, the film explores themes of holding on and letting go, and growing up. Sam believes the only way is to go a private school – but his parents can’t afford the offer. As a last resort, they turn to the power company for funding, forcing Sam to decide. This Guardian documentary meets a boy who must choose between opposing Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant and benefiting from its educational bursary. Hinkley Point, on the Somerset coast, is the biggest building site in Europe and the most expensive nuclear power station in the world. Trailer.(link is external)

 

SEA GYPSIES: THE PLUTONIUM DOME(link is external)

2021, Marshall Islands, Director Nico Edwards, English with Portuguese subtitles, 35 min.

I︎︎︎︎︎︎︎n the middle of the pacific ocean, the sailing ship Infinity and her ragtag crew stumble upon one of the most dangerous islands on earth. Birthplace of the hydrogen bomb, this tiny atoll absorbed the nuclearequivalent of 1.5 Hiroshima bombs a day for 12 years. That legacy waits near the beach, in a giant unguarded crumbling concrete dome. Atomic Test Clean-up Veteran Paul Griego about the film: „I feel it is as great film and so have the other atomic cleanup personnel I have spoken to.“

Trailer: https:// www.seagypsies.com/the-plutonium-dome(link is external)

 

SKIN DEEP FEAR (PEUR A FLEUR DE PEAU) (link is external)

FRANCE, 2020,  Director: FRANCK SANSON, Producer: PRONTOPROD & A2DOCK FILMS,

Documentary, Original Language: french, english, japan, Subtitles: English or Portuguese, 55 min.

One thing Fukushima in Japan and La Hague in France have in common is the fear of nuclear power. For some, it has turned into a hellish reality, for others, an ever-present disquiet, whether conscious or unconscious. « Skin Deep Fear » is a film born of a personal shock to the author, that of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The event roused memories long forgotten which once resurfaced, evoked a very real question : does the fear of nuclear exist?  Trailer: https://vimeo.com/416679751(link is external)

 

STALKING CHERNOBYL(link is external)

Ukraine/USA/Bulgaria/Slovakia, 2020, Director & Producer: Iara Lee, English/Russian /Ukrainian, Subtitles English or Portuguese, 57 min.

Stalking Chernobyl, a forthcoming documentary from Cultures of Resistance Films, examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, wildlife has returned in the absence of human settlements. Meanwhile, illegal hiking adventurers known as "stalkers," extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the ghostly, post-apocalyptic landscape. Info/trailer: https://culturesofresistancefilms.com(link is external)

 

TELEVISION EVENT(link is external)

USA, 2020, Director & Producer: Jeff Daniels, Documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 91 min.  

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE meets THE ATOMIC CAFE in this archive-based feature documentary that views the dramatic climax of the Cold War through the lens of a commercial television network, as it narrowly succeeds in producing America’s most watched, most controversial made-for-TV-movie, THE DAY AFTER , in 1983. This film addresses a universal challenge - grasping how vast global issues such as climate change, the refugee crisis and in this case nuclear proliferation affect us personally. We have much to learn from how this television network took a subject so terrifying, so unpalatable and turned it into prime-time family viewing. With irreverent humor and sobering apocalyptic vision, this film reveals how a commercial broadcaster seized a moment of unprecedented television viewership, made an emotional connection with an audience of over 100 million and forced an urgent conversation with the US President on his policy towards nuclear proliferation.  Film website: www.televisionevent.com(link is external) / Trailer(link is external)

 

THE BASEMENT  (지하실) (link is external)

South Korea Year, 2020, Director: Choi Yang Hyun, Producer: Lee Jieun, Fiction,

Korean with English or with Portuguese subtitles, 94 min.

Pan-Gyo which is Korean Silicon Valley was attacked by Nuclear bomb. The member of family who is owned venture business decided to hide at basement in their house for 2 weeks in accordance with direction from Korean Government. The family was started to struggle to survive in the basement day by day... The film was produced during Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020. This film invokes metaphor for a middle class life when they tried to survive against a risk of extinction such as nuclear attack or pandemic while they were isolated drastically from the outside. Choi Yang Hyun was born in Seoul. He received his BA film directing and Korean literature at university and his MA image engineering at graduate school. His short feature films have been nominated or won in many film festivals. Currently, He is directly managing a film production called Paranoi Future Cinema Lab. "The Basement" is his first full length feature film. Trailer:(link is external)

 

THE GARDEN                    

USA, 2021, Director & Producer Bill McCarthy, Animation, English with Portuguese subtitles. 7 min.

The Garden is the story of a blind Indian Shaman who begins planting a garden at the gates of a nuclear weapons facility. The Shaman is confronted by the foreman who demands she stop planting. Disregarding his demand, the Shaman continues planting, resulting in a giant garden of sunflowers which overwhelms the staff of the facility and starts covering the nuclear plant.

 

THE INVISIBLE ISLAND (L'Ile Invisible / 見えない島)(link is external)

France, 2021, Director Keiko Courdy, Producer PIKA PIKA FILMS, Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Seigen Ono,

Support from KissKissBankers, Documentary, 87 min, Japanese with English / Portuguese subtitles.

Waves crash eternally on the shore of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Next to a white facility for radioactive waste burning, black bags of contaminated soil pile up while a family looks for traces of their house. The film relates the stories of people who survived the tsunami and were forced to leave their home, people who came back in the darkest times, and people who came to work from far away, decontamination workers of Fukushima Daiichi. In the zone, invisible traumas are everywhere. There is no life without risk but what risk are we ready to take? In Japan, everyone wishes to forget and go forward, but the traces can not be erased that easily. 

 

The Return of Navajo Boy & Epilogue(link is external)

USA 2000/2008, Director: Jeff Spitz, Produced by Jeff Spitz and Bennie Klain,

Documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 72 min. Trailer.(link is external)

The Return of Navajo Boy is an internationally acclaimed documentary that reunited a Navajo family and triggered a federal investigation into uranium contamination. It tells the story of Elsie Mae Begay, whose history in pictures reveals an incredible and ongoing struggle for environmental justice. The film chronicles an extraordinary chain of events, beginning with the appearance of a 1950s film reel, which lead to the return of a long lost brother to his Navajo family, living in the Monument Valley. A powerful epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films’ outreach campaign create news and rally supporters including Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform mandated a clean-up plan by the five agencies that are responsible for uranium  contamination.   The documentary, epilogue and now 15 webisodes have leveraged several remarkable impacts:  Bernie Cly, one of the Navajo family featured, has been awarded $100,000 in compensation from the US government. And in April 2014, the Navajo nation won the largest environmental settlement in US-American history, $1 billion payout from Kerr-McGee, the corporate contaminator exposed by the documentary. Website.(link is external)

 

THE SHADOW PROJECT(link is external)

Canada, 2020, Director and Producer: Teresa D’Elia, Experimantal Documentary, 5 min, English with Portuguese subtitles.

The Shadow Project has taken place in over 250 cities worldwide. The event commemorates the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan and aims to raise awareness about the ongoing threat from nuclear proliferation. In Hamilton, Ontario, The Shadow Project is hosted each year by artist Bryce Kanbara (You Me Gallery). This film presents footage from the 2019 event and archival material, set to a poem by celebrated writer Ellen S. Jaffe. The piece is performed by poet Nisha Patel (2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion and former Poet Laureate, City of Edmonton). Film website: https://hope56films.com(link is external)

 

TO NOT FORGET (Para não esquecer)

Brazil, 2022, Directed by Gabriel Leal, Production Centeio Filmes, 40 min, Portuguese, World Premiere.

Many memories have been lost by those who live two lives, one before and one after the Cesium 137 accident in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil. Cesium victim Odesson couldn't keep anything from before 1987 apart from his memories. Thinking about preserving the story of the accident, he tells how those days were from his perspective. Gabriel Leal is a 27 years old filmmaker from Goiânia. He graduated in journalism at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. Gabriel is passionate about listening and telling stories.

 

TOTEM & ORE  (link is external)

Australia, 2019, Director & Producer: John Mandelberg, Executive Producer: Bozic Wongar,

Actress and Narrator: Ursula Yovich, Documentary, English, Japanese, Russian, English & Portuguese subtitles, 97 min.

TOTEM & ORE starts in 1945 with the Hiroshima bombing and ends with the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in 2011. The film explores the effects of Nuclear bombs and weapons testing across the globe, from the Manhattan Project's first Atomic bomb test in the desert of Nevada, to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in 1945, and the first British thermonuclear test at Christmas Island in the Gilbert Island chain in the North Pacific in 1963. In Australia, the tragedy of uranium exploration, mining and British atomic testing in 1950’s Aboriginal Australia. Starting at the Hiroshima bomb and ending at the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. The historic tragedies and fear told by atomic bomb witnesses, activists, filmmakers, artists, actors, writers composers, doctors, professors. Aboriginal Actress, Ursula Yovich reflects on her visit to Hiroshima, her appeal that “No place in the world for Nuclear weapons!” Trailer.(link is external)

 

TOXIC NEIGHBOUR(link is external)

Canada, 2021, Director: Colin Scheyen, Producer: Ann Shin and Hannah Donegan,

Documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 25 min.

Eugene Bourgeois had no concerns about nuclear energy when he built his farm next door to the world's largest nuclear facility in 1974. Over that time, he and his wife Ann ran a successful wool business and taught generations of people around the world the art of knitting. They really believed they had found paradise. However, over the next few decades, Eugene, his family, and his sheep flock were frequently exposed to hydrogen sulfide, a deadly nerve gas from the nuclear plant, which caused hundreds of his sheep to be blinded, born deformed, or killed. The industry has denied any wrong doing, but Eugene has always known the truth and dedicated the rest of his life to pushing his nuclear neighbour for greater transparency and accountability. Trailer: https://vimeo.com/609829443(link is external)

 

TRANSMUTATIONS: VISUALIZING MATTER(link is external)

USA/Canada, 2021, Director Jesse Andrewartha, Producer: Marcos Fajardo, Documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles. 70 min.

Transmutations is a multi-year project that explores the history, legacy and radioactivity of uranium mining during the Cold War in Canada and the US. Captured over the course of three years using 35mm motion picture film and digital technologies, the film reveals the mineral and the people whose lives have been impacted by uranium: ex-miners that toiled decades underground, Indigenous leaders and activists leading the charge to clean up the mines and the places that shifted the balance of power on a global scale. Project website https://www.transmutationsproject.com(link is external)

 

UNSETTLING DUST(link is external)

Netherlands, 2021, Director: Tineke van Veen & Barbara Prezelj, Producer: Tineke van Veen,

short documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles, 9 min.

 Unsettling Dust, a collaborative short film project, explores the lived, bodily experience of radiation by focusing on the relationship between post-nuclear landscapes, radioactive dust and breathing. It draws attention to Fort de Vaujours, a former nuclear weapon testing site on the outskirts of Paris and asks what it means to be living with the threat of contagion, with doubt cast upon your every single breath. Film website: http://www.tinekevanveen.com(link is external)

 

URANIUM – TWISTING THE DRAGON’S TAIL / The rock that became a bomb(link is external)

Australia, 2015, Director Wain Fimeri, Producer Sonya Pemberton. Documentary, 51 min. English with Portuguese Subtitles.

At the turn of the 20th century uranium is virtually unknown and basically worthless. Dr Derek Muller embarks on an adventure to reveal how, in just a single generation, uranium transforms into the most valuable and terrifying rock on Earth. The discoveries of scientists such as Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford and Albert Einstein unlock the secrets of the uranium atom, and allow us to peer into the very nature of the universe. Then one clear morning above the city of Hiroshima, uranium unleashes a terrifying power and changes the world forever.  Trailer.(link is external)

 

VALLEY OF THE GODS (Dolina Bogów)(link is external)

Poland/Italy/Luxemburg/USA, 2019, Director Lech Majewski, (link is external)Producer Lech Majewski and Filip Rymsza, Co-production Poland-Luxembourg, Royal Road Entertainment, Cast: Josh Hartnett, John Malkovich(link is external), John Rhys-Davies, Bérénice Marlohe, Keir Dullea, Steven Skyler, Joseph Runningfox,  Ficition, 126 min, English with Portuguese subtitles.

 The film weaves together three narrative threads: Navajo archaic legend about gods locked inside the rocks of the Valley of the Gods; a story of the wealthiest person on earth, Wes Tauros (John Malkovich), who lives hidden away from the world suffering from a personal tragedy; and that of the narrator, John Ecas (Josh Hartnett), who works as a copywriter at Tauros’s company. After a traumatic split from his wife, John starts writing his boss’s biography and accepts an invitation to his mansion. At this time Tauros’s company, which mines uranium ore, buys the Valley of the Gods to bore tunnels through the sacred land. The shattered peace of Navajo ancestors makes the rocks give birth to an avenger. Trailer. (link is external)

 

WHAT TRAVELERS ARE SAYING ABOUT JORNADA DEL MUERTO (link is external)   

USA, 2021, Director & Producer: Hope Tucker, Experimental documentary, English with Portuguese subtitles., 14 min.

 Residents of and visitors to the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico, site of the first detonation of an atomic bomb, contribute to the production of public memory as they offer logistical advice, philosophical reckonings, and plaintive cries about making "the journey of the dead." Made in remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the detonation of nuclear weapons in Japan and the US and the 340th anniversary of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Made in resistance to nuclear colonialism. "Tucker's way of representing the historical past makes us reconsider what the past historical time should be and what kind of action we should take to commemorate it." Kim Taein, Curator of Museum of Contemporary Art Busan. More info: http://www.theobituaryproject.org(link is external)

 

WORLD WAR 4 - THE REALISM CUT (link is external) 

                 

 New Zealand, 2022, Director A.K. Strom, Sci-Fi-Thriller, with Campbell Rousselle and Graham Vincent,

English with Portuguese subtitles, 87 min.

The most chillingly real buildup to nuclear war ever put on film. A nuclear thriller with a documentary feel. "World War 4 - the Realism cut" is a special cut of the film designed to bring home the full reality of this unfolding nightmare. Seven years in the making, this is a most chilling nuclear war film. Watch as real armies march, bombs rain down, and soldiers storm the beaches. One family is caught up in the ever-growing conflict. Can they survive as total war is declared and nuclear weapons are unleashed?

 

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Contact: 

International Uranium Film Festival
Rua Monte Alegre 356 / 301
Rio de Janeiro/RJ
CEP 20.240-194 
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www.uraniumfilmfestival.org