Uranium Film Festival Comes to Navajo Nation Dec 2-4

The International Uranium Film Festival makes a stop at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona this December 2nd through the 4th, bringing three days of insightful documentaries that reveal stories of many First Nations and aboriginal peoples worldwide whose historical lands have been used for radioactive minerals mining and nuclear waste disposal - often with little regard for the health, safety, and security of the communities involved. The Southwestern United States was an epicenter of wartime and peacetime uranium mining from the Cold War onwards; the Navajo Nation only one of sadly many who have suffered its lasting ill consequences.

The [International Uranium Film Festival] is the world's only traveling film festival devoted to the entire Nuclear Fuel Chain, from uranium mining to uranium tailings and nuclear waste, from Hiroshima to Fukushima and Fallujah.

The festival will make its way from Albuquerque (Nov. 27-28) to Santa Fe (Nov. 30-Dec. 1), to Window Rock and finally to Washington D.C. and New York City in early 2014. The founder of the IUFF, Norbert G. Suchanek of Germany, will be present at each screening along with Executive Director Marcia Gomes de Oliveira of Brazil and various producers and directors of the films. Each screening is organized by a diverse group of volunteers to bring these films to the wide screen.

Because of the tremendous impact uranium mining has had on Diné peoples, while these films are playing in the theatre of the Navajo Nation Museum, there will be several organizations coming together on the side to dialogue about the uranium legacy issues still plaguing the Navajo Nation and the new uranium mining permit applications threatening nearby communities and Sacred Sites. Community groups, residents and allies will meet for the two and a half days at the museum and in the local area. Online video streaming will be available via ustream.com during selected hours of the event.

The film festival's schedule and more details are also available on their Facebook page.

Uranium Film Festival Rio de Janeiro Announces 2013's "Yellow Oscar"-Winning Films

While I haven't yet had the chance to attend one of the touring festivals since their start in 2011, as a former media person with a life-long fascination in all things nuclear, the international Uranium Film Festival holds a very special interest for me. This past Sunday, May 26th capped nine days of film and documentary showings in Rio with the "Yellow Oscar" awards, celebrating offerings of exceptional merit. From the Uranium Film Festival's "Art and Awareness" website section,

[The festival] was founded in 2011 in Santa Teresa, the famous artist quarter in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The aim of the festival is to inform the public, from a neutral position, about nuclear power, uranium mining, nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactivity. The horror of atomic bombs and those who suffered from them, and nuclear accidents like Chernobyl or Fukushima should never be forgotten - nor repeated. The correlation between nuclear energy and weapons must be openly discussed. The festival inspires discourse about the health and environmental risks of radioactive materials and waste. We seek to educate and activate the public on these issues. The dynamic media of film is an important tool to bring that information to a diverse international public.

Among this year's Yellow Oscar winners is Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1, a documentary by Adam Jonas Horowitz on the devastating effects of U.S. Cold-War nuclear testing on residents of the Marshall Islands, including government footage of nuclear tests and interviews with residents of nearby Rongelap Atoll,which was never evacuated before the March 1954 "Bravo" test - America's largest-ever atomic test explosion, a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima.

Other winners this year include Atomic Ivan (Russia), for best feature fiction movie; Curiosity Kills (Estonia), for best short comedy; High Power (India), for best short documentary; Abita (Germany), for best animated film, and No to a Nuclear Jordan (Jordan), for the best student film.

Learn more about the Uranium Film Festival and upcoming events at uraniumfilmfestival.org.

Uranium Film Festival Coming to Berlin October 4-12, 2012

If I could snap my fingers and be in Berlin this October 4th through the 12th, I'd love to attend this remarkable Brazil-based international event:

The International Uranium Film Festival is dedicated to films about atomic bombs the whole nuclear fuel chain and radioactivity: Uranium mining, nuclear power plants, atomic bombs, nuclear waste, radioactive risks, nuclear medicine. The festival wants to stimulate the production of independent documentaries, movies and animated films about any nuclear or radioactive issue.

Uranium Film Festival is a project of the Yellow Archives, a cultural and educational organization that hopes to increase public information about nuclear power, nuclear waste, uranium mining and radioactivity in general. Yellow Archives is the first-ever film library in Brazil and Latin America dedicated to non-profit, educational and research films about the nuclear fuel chain and radioactivity, and makes its archives open to schools, universities and other non-profit organizations. Among the films to be screened are Roberto Pires' riveting Cesio-137: El Pesadelo de Goiânia (Cesium-137: The Nightmare of Goiânia), the 2011 Audience Award winner for Best Feature Film, and Bill Kiesling's 2012 "Yellow Oscar"-winning documentary, "Not for Public Release: a Nuclear Incident in Lock Haven."

The next Uranium Film Festival is scheduled for May 2013 at Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Modern Art. The Uranium Film Festival and the Yellow Archives depend primarily on private funding for their work; you can get involved by becoming a sponsor, or by making a donation to the film festival. The full program of the upcoming October event in Berlin is available here [PDF], and you can also view the program brochure of the 1st Uranium Film Festival from 2011.