At its core, The Atomic States of America is about ordinary people asking questions. It's about people tending to accept their circumstances as normal until these questions yield disturbing patterns that obliterate the faith that everyone wishes to have in presumed experts charged with keeping us safe.
The film, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, does an excellent job crisply laying out the basic issues surrounding nuclear power in the U.S.
Since one in every three Americans lives within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor (the radius that U.S. officials recommended be evacuated in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan), nuclear power is an issue that has an impact on everyone. The film's rare contribution is its focus on communities that live with nuclear reactors and the patterns they share.
Independent documentary filmmakers Sheena Joyce and Don Argott never thought much about nuclear power until they read author Kelly McMasters' memoir Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, about growing up on Long Island next to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, which housed several nuclear research reactors.
The Wampanoag Indians of southeastern Massachusetts inhabited the lush seacoast areas known today as Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and environs, some of most desirable real estate in the U.S. These native peoples helped the Pilgrims survive and in return were systematically denied their land, culture, and very lives. In...
What happens when a group of people of all ages come together to creatively express an abstract concept, an emotion called gratitude? A mythical, musical community expression flowers like an autumn crocus the weekend before Thanksgiving in wild, wonderful Brattleboro ... the annual Gathering in Gratitude. Gathering in Gratitude...
On Sunday, Oct. 17, a performance/ritual will occur at the Stone Church in Brattleboro unlike anything you, or most people, have ever seen, unless you've seen butoh before. I had never heard of butoh before my husband, experimental musician John Loggia, told me he would be playing for a performance here in town. A butoh dancer, Angela Martinelli, had recently arrived from Seattle and was eager to bring the form to Brattleboro, where apparently it has not been performed before.