An Atomic Evening
Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise + Crossroads (English friendly)
- Many Anthropocene researchers consider the nuclear weapons tests of the 1950s to be the beginning of a new era. The film review Cinema of the Anthropocene commences with a strong atomic accent. The atomic bomb and radioactive contamination are just a few of the key topics in the discussion of human agency, but these are also topics that have fascinated filmmakers and artists. Recordings of the atomic mushroom have become one of the most powerful and iconic images of visual culture, and the set of films opening the review will be devoted to this.
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Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise
- directed by Mark Cousins, United Kingdom 2015, 71'
- Mark Cousins, who also directed the monumental The Story of Film: An Odyssey, has made a bold documentary about the lethal but fascinating power of atomic energy for the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He uses archive footage from the British Film Institute, NASA and CERN, kaleidoscopic images – telling the social history of the atom; nightmarish, but also filled with human hope – given added impetus by a soundtrack from the Scottish band Mogwai.
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Crossroads
- directed by Bruce Conner, USA 1976, 36'
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Operation Crossroads was the name of the first two of 23 nuclear weapons tests that the United States conducted at Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958. Both tests involved the detonation of weapons with a yield equivalent to twenty-three million tons of TNT–the same as the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki. More than seven hundred cameras, and approximately five hundred camera operators surrounded the test site. Nearly half the world’s supply of film was at Bikini for the tests, making these explosions the most thoroughly photographed moment in history. Bruce Conner used archival materials, combining 23 shots of the same explosion from various perspectives and at different speeds. He thus created a mesmerizing film, bringing out the event’s catastrophic and destructive beauty.
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