Film Series at the Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley
August 2-30, 1995


"Now I've become death, the destroyer of worlds."-Robert J. Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, 1945


How do we imagine the unimaginable? In the case of nuclear war, we look away from the light, as reason fails before the threat of possible destruction. Within the popular imagination, however, cinema has played an important role, as a screen on which we can creatively engage the character of nuclear war. Like rehearsals for apocalypse, films enact the appalling possibilities of the atom while sounding the depths of cultural anxiety. Throughout August, the series Becoming Death: Cinema and the Atomic Age looks at films that capture life in the glare of the man-made sun. Included are seminal Japanese films, most importantly Bell of Nagasaki, the first film to directly broach the subject, and Children of Hiroshima, the first uncensored film to recount the aftermath. Nine Days of One Year is an unusual '60s Soviet film questioning the development of nuclear weaponry. The array of Hollywood films demonstrates an enormous ambivalence towards our nuclear future. Early efforts like The Beginning or the End and Above and Beyond reveal a tendency to produce heroic dramas with only slight historical veracity. Exploiting the subject from a different angle, Five and Panic in Year Zero! speculate on the aftermath of Armageddon while throwing in cheap thrills. More sensible films such as Ladybug, Ladybug and Desert Bloom recognize the corrosive anxiety that typifies our time. On the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we offer this series as a way to register our quiet contemplation of the unimaginable. --- Steve Seid

Short Calendar of Films in the Becoming Death Series
With short descriptions and links to Film Notes.

Full Film Notes
For each film in the Becoming Death Series,
including numerous linked resources.

Gallery of Online Resources for Cinema and the Atomic Age
With historical audio and movie files, and links to Internet resources.

Traces
Traces, which also appears as a two-channel installation in the Theater Gallery,
collides the public history of the Atomic Age and the artist's
personal memory of growing up in its shadow.

This series is presented with assistance from Physicians for Social Responsibility. The image at the top of this page is from "Eclipse of the Man Made Sun" by Nicolette Freeman, Amanda Stewart [text added].