Hiroshima & Nagasaki: A Grim Anniversary
Eighty years ago this week, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, another fell on the city of Nagasaki. To mark this grim anniversary, OVID is premiering the HIROSHIMA BOUND by Martin Lucas, and the latest addition to OVID’s collection spotlighting the ATOMIC AGE.
HIROSHIMA BOUND is a personal documentary that tracks the construction of America’s collective memory of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It follows the obscure histories of specific photos and photographers, both Japanese and American, who visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombings, counterposing this visual legacy with the stories of survivors, whose practice of speaking to small groups of students offers a modest but powerful counter-history to the official record.
The film uses its maker’s own legacy as a child of the Atomic Age to look at the complexity of the representation of mass death, and the role of the archive in the digital era, taking viewers to the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, the International Center of Photography in New York, and to contemporary Hiroshima, in order to explore and ‘unpack’ the trauma and myth surrounding the culture of Hiroshima representation.
“Both personal and universal. Very powerful… poetic and gripping.” —Peter Kuznitz, Director, Nuclear Studies Institute, American University
WATCH the HIROSHIMA BOUND TRAILER HERE:
WATCH HIROSHIMA BOUND on OVID.tv
EXPLORE THE COLLECTION
Explore all of our films connected to the Atomic Age here, including Academy shortlisted and National Emmy winning DARK CIRCLE, which provides a scientific primer on the catastrophic power of nuclear energy while also relating tragic human stories detailing the devastating toll radioactive toxicity has taken – focusing in large part on Rocky Flats, Colorado, whose plutonium trigger facility infamously contaminated the surrounding area.
The 2K HD Restoration was assisted by the Academy Film Archive and supervised by co-director Judy Irving.
“★★★★! Dark Circle is one of the most horrifying films I’ve seen, and also sometimes one of the funniest (if you can laugh at the same things in real life that you found amusing in Dr. Strangelove). Using powers granted by the Freedom of Information Act, and sleuthing that turned up government film the government didn’t even know it had, the producers of this film have created a mosaic of the Atomic Age. It is a tribute to the power of the material, and to the relentless digging of the filmmakers, that the movie is completely riveting.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
WATCH the DARK CIRCLE TRAILER HERE
OVID also recommends I AM BECOME DEATH: THEY MADE THE BOMB by Arthur MacCaig, which focuses on The Manhattan Project. After only four years but with a budget of 2.2 billion dollars and a work force of over 100,000, had created the ultimate weapon. Only a handful of people on the project were aware of its implications. This documentary is about a few of these people, cloistered away from 1943 to 1945 at Los Alamos, New Mexico: a place that officially did not exist.
Among them were many of the world’s most brilliant scientists: the Americans Bob Wilson, Bob Serber, Bob Christy and Harold Agnew; the Europeans Hans Bethe, Stan Ulam, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller. And above them all, was their charismatic but enigmatic leader, Robert Oppenheimer, who baptized the first bomb – Trinity. I AM BECOME DEATH is a unique, rare view from within as several of these scientists speak of experiences on the path to their terrible shared destiny. None hesitated in the creation of the bomb. All did so without illusion.
As their lives and work at Los Alamos are revealed, they relate stories of contradictions and jealousies, and how each came to terms with the atomic era’s most immediate consequence: the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And as their stories unfold, viewers become painfully aware that, even fifty years later, Trinity is with us today, as it will remain tomorrow.
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