Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
This series is presented with assistance from Physicians for Social Responsibility. Thanks to Chris Beaver, Mick Broderick, Stephanie Fraser, Kyoko Hirano, Jerry Honda, Pearl Leonard, Mona Nagai, Rebecca Solnit, Chuck Stephens.
The Bed-Sitting Room 7:30
Richard Lester (U.K., 1969)
It is three years since the shortest war in history: two minutes, twenty-eight seconds, including negotiation of the peace treaty. Now London's glowing and twenty-odd survivors are grubbing through the ruins of an atomized city, trying to resurrect even a parodic semblance of the old order. Penelope (Rita Tushingham), seventeen months pregnant, lives in a deserted subway with her parents who are mutating into, respectively, a dressing cabinet and a parrot. Floating overhead in a balloon, policemen Peter Cook and Dudley Moore enjoin everyone to "keep moving," while below, Lord Fortnum (Ralph Richardson) fears he will soon metamorphize into a shoddy antechamber. Richard Lester's absurdist comedy looks at the monstrous possibilities of survival after a nuclear holocaust while taking punchy swipes at the government buffoons who could bring such devastation to pass. The Bed-Sitting Room ends on an optimistic note as the BBC announces that England is, once again, a world power.-Steve Seid
¥ Written by John Antrobus, from the play by Antrobus, Spike Milligan. Photographed by David Watkin. With Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan. (90 mins, Color, 16mm, From MGM/UA)
Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 9:20
Stanley Kubrick (U.K., 1964)
Believing that Commie-instigated water flouridation has made him impotent, Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) launches a big S.A.C. attack against the Soviet Union. Pretty soon President Muffley (Peter Sellers) is sitting around the War Table with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a gaggle of gimcrack generals lead by "Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott), fielding doomsday scenarios. Desperate, the prez turns to ex-Nazi physicist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers, again) who calculates that the gene pool can survive such a theoretical annihilation. Kubrick's brilliant farce rejects our fear of fail-safe-mechanical insurance that the bombs will be deployed-and instead views human snafus as the more probable terror. Whether it's Turgidson pridefully advocating restrained nuclear war, or Herr Doctor speculating about underground stud farms, the real threat orbits around a nucleus of unstable personalities. Dr. Strangelove asks, "Where are the safeguards against the militarized ego?" -Steve Seid
¥Written by Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, based on the novel Red Alert by George. Photographed by Gilbert Taylor. With Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn. (94 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Columbia Repertory)
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Rhapsody in August 7:00
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1991)
(Hachigatsu no kyohshikyoku). A dread of nuclear catastrophe is not new to Kurosawa. In 1955 he directed Record of a Living Being, a powerful film about an aging patriarch obsessed by the imminence of war. Later, Dreams (1990) forever fused a nuclear power plant disaster to the image of Mt. Fuji: nature in upheaval. Kurosawa sets Rhapsody in August in contemporary Nagasaki as four teenage cousins visit their grandmother, a survivor of the blast. Repelled but curious, the teenagers search through Nagasaki for remnants of the event, while the grandmother fascinates them with chilling stories of water-imps and ghosts. The devastation of Nagasaki, at least for the adults, has passed into the realm of safely remote folklore. But it is Kurosawa's central metaphor, the twisted wreckage of playground equipment, that focuses the film's intent. The delicately serene Rhapsody in August speaks to today's youth who, after all, are not insulated from the errors of their elders.-Steve Seid
¥Written by Kurosawa, from the novel Nabe no naka by Kiyoko Murata. Photographed by Taikao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. With Sachiko Murase, Hisashi Igawa, Narumi Kayashima, Richard Gere. (98 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From New Yorker)
Black Rain 9:00
Shohei Imamura (Japan, 1989)
(Kuroi ame). Displaying impeccable restraint, Imamura's Black Rain depicts the bombing of Hiroshima and its tragic aftermath by observing the psychological toll rather than the wholesale carnage. The film begins with the blast; the city is devastated by rolling thunder, and on a ferry nearby, Yasuko, her aunt Shigeko, and her uncle Shigematsu are splattered by radioactive droplets. Five years pass and Yasuko is now of marrying age, but each successive suitor rejects her when rumors surface that she is tainted by "black rain." Yasuko soon comes to think of herself as a pariah. Imamura touches upon a rarely addressed issue, the onus of survival. Yasuko and her ailing guardians are bound by this pitiful stigma: "Yasuko, my wife, and I are a community based on the bomb," Shigematsu writes in his diary. Exquisitely photographed, Black Rain is about the descending time-bomb of death and discrimination.-Steve Seid
¥ Written by Imamura, Toshiro Ishido, from the novel by Masuji Ibuse. Photographed by Takashi Kawamata. With Yoshiko Tanaka, Kazuo Kitamura, Etsuko Ichihara, Shoichi Ozawa. (123 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Angelika Films)
The Radiation Effects Research Foundation: This research group with labs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was founded twenty years ago to study not only the casualties of the 1945 bombings, but the effects on future generations.
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Children of Hiroshima 7:00
Kaneto Shindo (Japan, 1952)and short
two sacs en route (Helene Aylon, 1995, 2 mins, silent)
A contemplative work poetically following the river voyage of two sacs, containing redemptive seeds and pods, en route to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
(Genbaku no ko). Just days after the U.S. occupation of Japan was terminated, director Shindo and crew arrived in Hiroshima to begin shooting the first uncensored film about the atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. Also known as "Atom Bomb Children," this wistful film is based on a popular collection of stories written by children who survived the devastation. Following suit, Shindo's cast includes many youthful hibakusha (A-bomb survivors). The pitiable reality of life after the catastrophe is seen through the eyes of a kindergarten teacher who returns to Hiroshima to seek out her former students and make a brief pilgrimage to the site of her home beside Kokutaiji Temple-better known as ground zero. The individual stories of the children are tearful, but Shindo's delicate hand accentuates hope, stressing life over death. Never angry, never scolding, Children of Hiroshima is a plea for peace rendered in the ashes of ruin.-Steve Seid
¥Written by Shindo, based on essays by Hiroshima children. Photographed by Takeo Itoh. With Nobuko Otowa, Osamu Takizawa, Takashi Itoh, Miwa Saitoh. (85 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, Courtesy of The Japan Foundation and Kindai eiga kyokai). Special thanks to Kyoko Hirano.
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Traces and Other Works by Peter d'Agostino 7:00
Artist in Person
Philadelphia-based artist Peter d'Agostino was born in 1945 "between the bombs"-that is, between the first test at Alamogordo in July and the bombing of Hiroshima less than a month later. His new work, Traces, which also appears as a two-channel installation in the Theater Gallery, collides the public history of the Atomic Age and the personal memory of growing up in its shadow. The tape is a melange of recognizable cultural images-the Enola Gay, Life Magazine, Robert Oppenheimer-interspersed with personal fragments: home movies and a return to his childhood neighborhood. Woven throughout this assemblage are glimpses of the annual Peace Conference Ceremonies at Hiroshima in which paper lanterns are set afloat on the rivers, each inscribed with the name of someone who died as a result of the bombing. Traces is a litany for a past that could nurture as well as destroy. Several other works will also be screened.-Steve Seid
Traces(1995, 15 mins). The Walk Series (1973-74, 60 mins [excerpt]); TransmissionS (1985-90, 28 mins); VR/RV: a recreational vehicle in virtual reality (1993-94, 11 mins). (Total running time: 114 mins plus discussion, 3/4" Video, From the artist)
Hypocenter of A-bomb: An image of ground zero in Nagasaki.
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Ladybug, Ladybug 7:30
Frank Perry (U.S., 1963)
The serenity of a rural elementary school is shattered when the Civil Defense alarm warns that a nuclear attack is imminent. But before any bombs, the slow-burn of panic arrives as the children are sent scurrying home. The follow-up to the Perrys' successful David and Lisa, Ladybug, Ladybug traces with almost documentary cool the unraveling of the assumed civility that coheres a community. One of the children, a cruel twelve-year-old named Harriet, invites several classmates to share her family's bomb shelter. Harriet emerges as a sort of "lady of the flies" and when another girl, Sarah, asks for admittance to the shelter, Harriet refuses. Not popular at the time of its release, Perry's film looks at the consequences of the Atomic Age-the irrational fears and corrosive anxiety. According to Ladybug, Ladybug, the first casualty is our humanity.-Steve Seid
¥ Written by Eleanor Perry, based on an article by Lois Dickert. Photographed by Leonard Hirschfield. With Jane Connell, William Daniels, James Frawley, Richard Hamilton. (81 mins, B&W, 16mm, From MGM/UA)
Desert Bloom 9:10
Eugene Corr (U.S., 1985)
Desert Bloom is about the lost innocence of an adolescent girl, her family, and an entire country. Set in early 1951, the film chronicles the tumultuous coming-of-age of a thirteen-year-old (Annabeth Gish) in an unsettled household roiling with an alcoholic stepfather (Jon Voight), traumatized by memories of WWII; a frustrated mother (Jobeth Williams) seeking comfort in the vacuity of fifties optimism, and a worldly aunt (Ellen Barkin) who brings a frankness of feeling to this nuclear unit. On the outskirts of their dusty Nevada town, the government is preparing Yucca Flats for A-bomb testing. Director Corr uses the bomb as a metaphor, almost a character, that parallels the disruption of the family but also suggests a generalized sense of cultural helplessness. As the mushroom cloud rises above the horizon, we are reminded of the fragility of the single family dwelling.-Steve Seid
¥Written by Corr, from a story by Linda Remy, Corr. Photographed by Reynaldo Villalobos. With Annabeth Gish, Jon Voight, Ellen Barkin, Jobeth Williams. (106 mins, Color, 35mm, From Columbia Repertory)
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Eclipse of the Man-Made Sun 7:30
Nicolette Freeman/Amanda Stewart (Australia, 1990)
Preceded by shorts:
Involuntary Conversion (Jeanne Finley, U.S., 1991). Finley's wry work is a contemporary look at how "official" language is used to obscure the true significance of military actions. The Gulf War becomes a sci-fi site where "soft targets" (cities) absorb "collateral damage" (civilian casualties). (9 mins, 3/4" Video, From Video Data Bank)
About Fall-Out (Wilding Productions, U.S., 1963). This Civil Defense doc attempts to neutralize the threat of radiation by making it friendlier. Through repetition, understatement and omission, it lulls you into thinking fallout is a nasty inconvenience, like a big bad-hair day. (24 mins, Color, 16mm, From Peter Conheim)
Bridge of Knots (Helene Aylon, 1995, 6 mins)
A lyrical visual treatment of Aylon's installation, featuring knotted pillowcases that once carried earth from Strategic Air Command nuclear sites, along with other cases from Japan and the former Soviet Union. The soundtrack with resonating chants was composed by Meredith Monk.
Bridge of Knots: Helene Aylon's installation drapes the concrete facade of the University Art Museum with lengths of knotted pillowcases, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These pillowcases or Òsacs,Ó once filled with Òendangered earthÓ from twelve nuclear weapons sites across the U.S., are inscribed with women's dreams. Other pillowcases used in Bridge of Knots were part of exchanges made between the artist and women in Japan and the former Soviet Union. On view through September 3.
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The dust had barely settled when the atomic bomb passed into myth with its implications of succor, progress and inevitability. Eclipse of the Man-Made Sun astutely examines the imagery and language associated with nuclear weaponry and power. Forced to cloud the terrors of the Atomic Age, science, industry and government aligned the debate over nuclear technology with promises of abundance, health and security. The A-bomb became our "protector," the atom our "friend." A religiosity entered the discussion as man's ability to harness nature took on the proportions of the divine. Clean energy, propelling the family into the future, would insure continued prosperity as we unlocked the secrets of the universe. Using a rich archive of period footage, animation and commentary by media analysts, Eclipse alerts us to the blinding glare radiated by the nuclear myth.-Steve Seid
¥ (50 mins, Color/ B&W, 3/4" video, From The Video Project)
Nine Days of One Year 9:10
Mikhail Romm (USSR, 1961)
A young Soviet physicist is dangerously exposed to radiation during an experiment. Despite warnings from his medical advisers and the pleas of his wife, he decides to continue his research into thermonuclear fission-until the new reactor breeds discontent. Beautifully photographed in chilling black and white, Nine Days of One Year offers a provocative glimpse of the conflicts between men and science. The philosophical weight of this unusual Cold War film is seen in the nondescript corridors, endless control panels, impregnable steel doors, and bulky machinery that dwarf the physicists. However, director Romm humanizes his themes by constructing complex and enigmatic characters who are vulnerably moral. Lively and often humorously staged scenes of the scientists talking shop air the necessity for human need over historical imperative. Anything but didactic, Nine Days of One Year is a surprising artifact from the glory days of the arms race. -Steve Seid
¥Written by Romm, Danily Khrabovitski. Photographed by Gherman Lavrov. With Alexei Batalov, Innokenti Smoktunovski, Tamara Lavrova, Nikolai Polinikov. (110 mins, In Russian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, PFA Collection)
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Five 7:30
Arch Oboler (U.S., 1951)
Arch Oboler was an oddball innovator: he created Bwana Devil, the first 3-D movie; a color process called Space-Vision, and a film genre that imagined the unimaginable. Five is the original post-apocalypse film, tracking the lives of all those who survive after a war has vanquished the world's population but left the cities intact (the neutron bomb?). Dazed and pregnant, Roseanne finds her way to a mountaintop cabin where Michael, a former New Yorker, is stalwart in his solitude. They are joined by three others: a bewildered bank manager, a sneering European adventurer, and the last black man on earth. Ensconced in their Frank Lloyd Wright digs (!), the "five" try to talk themselves into a brighter tomorrow, free from yesterday's misdeeds. Alas, jealousy and discord, holdovers from the old order, make their presence known. Five is quite a blast from the past.-Steve Seid
¥ Written by Oboler. Photographed by Louis Clyde Stoumen. With William Phipps, Susan Douglas, James Anderson, Charles Lampkin, Earl Lee. (93 mins, B&W, 16mm, From Kit Parker)
Panic in Year Zero! 9:20
Ray Milland (U.S., 1962)
Just two hours after departing Los Angeles for a vacation, Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and family discover that Tinsel Town is glow-in-the-dark: a nuclear attack has demolished the city of now-ascended angels. Stoically pragmatic, Harry declares, "When civilization gets civilized, I'll rejoin." His tight nuclear family, which includes Frankie Avalon as brother Rick, gathers provisions and holes up in an isolated cave for protection against the looters and assorted hooligans. This defensive posture is trumpeted by the president's emergency radio bulletin: "There are no civilians. We are all at war." The ensuing violent encounters, including the brutal rape of Harry's daughter, are handled with cruel efficiency. Harry, it turns out, is an A-one civilian soldier. Overlooking peripheral devastation from nuclear war, Milland's film suggests that individual cunning is enough to win the day-an ironic prescription for survival after the Big One.-Steve Seid
¥Written by Jay Simms, John Morton. Photographed by Gil Warrenton. With Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchell. (92 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Kit Parker)
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Beginning or the End? 7:00
Norman Taurog (U.S., 1947)
This docu-drama about the development of the A-bomb reveals itself as a Pentagonal apologia. Introduced as a documentary to be buried in a time capsule no less, this flim-flam film claims its place in history, factual distortions and all. Brian Donlevy plays Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the man who supervised America's best-kept secret. Under his watch, entire populations are relocated and mega-labs rise in a frenzy of research. It's all men in lab coats pursuing the power of the universe: Oppenheimer and Fermi, Lawrence and Szilard, even Einstein gets a look-alike cameo. Behind the exhilaration of discovery come the little falsehoods-that Japan was developing its own bomb, that we warned the citizens of Hiroshima to flee. Louis B. Mayer explained in a 1946 letter to Einstein, "dramatic truth is just as compelling a requirement...as veritable truth is on a scientist." A revision-free film for carefree viewing.-Steve Seid
¥Written by Frank Wead. Photographed by Ray June, Warren Newcomber. With Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Audrey Totter. (110 mins, B&W, 35mm, From MGM/UA)
Above and Beyond 9:10
Melvin Frank/Norman Panama (U.S., 1953)
The marriage of Colonel Tibbets (Robert Taylor) and wife Lucy (Eleanor Parker) is on the rocks. Why? Beyond his obsession with his new Air Force assignment, Tibbets won't even tell his wife what it is. Such is the unstable core of Above and Beyond, a glamorized bio-pic about the crew of the infamous Enola Gay. The film moves forward with well-oiled efficiency when concentrating on the training of a bomber crew for a top-secret mission. The strain of working under severe security is delivered with tense drama, leading to a startling re-enactment of the fatal flight over Hiroshima. One would surmise that the gravity of this historic mission would satisfy the dramatic appetite of any film. Not so in a sanitizing cinema that sacrificed veracity for virility. In this recounting, the domestic squabbles of husband and wife are more explosive than the bomb. -Steve Seid
¥Written by Frank, Panama, Beirne Lay, Jr., from a story by Lay. Photographed by Ray June. With Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, James Whitmore, Larry Keating. (121 mins, B&W, 35mm, From MGM/UA)
Enola Gay Perspectives: A vast collection of material regarding the Smithsonian Institute/Enola Gay controversy.
Becoming Death: Cinema & the Atomic Age
Them! 7:00
Gordon Douglas (U.S., 1954)
Them! is the first of the big-bug movies. Here, it's ants the size of picnic tables, found along a barren stretch of New Mexico dessert -- curiously close to Alamagordo. The entomologist assigned to the case (Edmund Gwenn) quickly determines the strange killers with a sweet tooth are "a giant mutation ... engendered by lingering radiation from the explosion of the first atomic bomb." What has (human) nature wrought? The nest of mutated monsters is destroyed, but the ants have been antsy: the queens have moved on. Undaunted, the army will make sure that they are only queens for a day. Timorously terrific, Them! is a syrupy concoction of fifties camp and catastrophe. Them R Us -- Steve Seid
¥Written by Ted Sherdeman, from a story by George Worthing. Photographed by Sid Hickox. With James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness. (93 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Kit Parker)
Free Admission!
Atomic Drive-In 9:00
Featuring Bruce Conner's Crossroads
Join us in the University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive sculpture garden (at the PFA/Durant Avenue entrance to the museum) for an off-the-wall on-the-wall screening of short films about the Atomic Age. Expect to be blown away by radiating messages from the avant-garde, as well as artifacts from the atomic dustbin of history. At the core is Bruce Conner's brilliant and funereal Crossroads (1976, 36 mins, B&W, 16mm, from Canyon Cinema), a re-choreographing of footage from "Operation Crossroads," the first underwater A-bomb test at Bikini Atoll. The repetitive detonation, originally recorded by over five hundred cameras, is offered as a lethal but eerily majestic specter of American might. Around this visual nucleus we'll present brief experimental films, ephemeral propaganda, and other light particles from America's fissionary filmmakers. An evening full of anti-matter-because anti matters.-Steve Seid
(Total running time: c. 75 mins)
A Few Words from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.