Hot Docs: Nuclear Savage

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Nuclear Savage (DVD 10606) puts a lens on the untold victims of nuclear testing. The effects of nuclear weaponry are well documented, yet few discuss the lives of the people intentionally exposed to radiation during nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. The film uses a combination of historical documents – some recently unearthed – and interviews with those who lived through nuclear testing. It reveals the tragic story of people dealing with the fallout of America's militaristic pursuits.

Official description from the film's website:

Adam Jonas Horowitz shot his first film in the Marshall Islands in 1986, and was shocked by what he found there, in this former American military colony in middle of the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive coconuts, leaking nuclear waste repositories, and densely populated slums were all the direct result of 67 Cold War U.S. nuclear bomb tests that vaporized islands and devastated entire populations.

Twenty years later, Adam returned to these islands to make this award winning shocking political and cultural documentary exposé titled Nuclear Savage; a heartbreaking and intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for dignity and survival after decades of intentional radiation poisoning at the hands of the American government. Relying on recently declassified U.S. government documents,devastating survivor testimony, and incredible unseen archival footage, this untold and true detective story reveals how U.S. scientists turned a Pacific paradise into a radioactive hell. Marshall islanders were used as human guinea pigs for three decades to study the effects of nuclear fallout on human beings with devastating results. Nuclear Savage is a shocking tale that pierces the heart of our democratic principles.