Two New Mexico filmmakers just secured a distribution deal for a documentary partly filmed in the state, entitled The Forgotten Bomb .
The documentary’s working title was A Tale of Two Museums because its creators envisioned it as a comparison between the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Japan and the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos. Executive Director Bud Ryan tells SFR that he wanted to contrast the “pure propaganda” of the Bradbury museum with the perspective on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided by the Hiroshima Peace Museum.
"Having gone to the Hiroshima Peace Museum and it having had such an impact on my life, and then visiting the Los Alamos museum, which I consider pure propaganda, I just wanted to make a contrast between those two museums," Ryan says.
Ryan was particularly struck by a short film playing at the Bradbury when he last visited it, a few years ago. The film depicted San Ildefonso Pueblo people happily giving up land during World War II, which Ryan said he tends to disbelieve.
The original vision for the film was not to be, however. Director and Producer Stuart Overbey says LANL spokesman Kevin Roark denied the filmmakers permission to film at the Bradbury Museum.
"He said they would allow it if we had mainstream media credentials, if we were from ABC or NBC," Overbey says. "But he said they no longer let independent people come in because [LANL was] always portrayed, in his words, as 'baby killers.'"
Ryan notes that the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada allowed them to film, even though it, unlike the Bradbury, is a privately-funded site.
Nevertheless, The Forgotten Bomb enjoyed an enthusiastic reception at the Albuquerque Film Festival, Overbey says. In fact, that’s how they ended up signing a distribution deal with Los Angeles-based Cinema Libre Studio.
"[Cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who recommended the movie to Cinema Libre] was sitting in the front row, and he jumped up after the film and said 'We've got to get this movie out there,'" Overbey says.
The documentary won't have a full theatrical release, but will be available on DVD through Netflix and other vendors.
Overbey notes that she knows of several other independent documentaries about nuclear weapons that are currently in the works, suggesting this is an issue whose time has come.
"It's kind of interesting that after a long silence there seems to be some public thought about this issue kind of bubbling up again...it seems like it's time for it to get back on the table and back into our consciousness," Overbey says.
Perhaps the impending construction of LANL's planned plutonium pit manufacturing facility, the Chemistry and Metallury Research Replacement facility, has inspired some of this work. Though the National Nuclear Security Agency recently gave the official go-ahead for the project—despite questions about its seismic safety and necessity in a post-Cold War world—LANL is waiting for Congress to finalize a budget funding its construction.
Meanwhile, Ryan is already thinking in terms of his next project, which he plans to pitch to Cinema Libre before the end of the year.
"The film I would most like to make would [ask the question] 'Is the United States a Christian country?'" Ryan says. "I know what my answer would be, but I'd love to interview people like [candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and US Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.] and others—maybe sit down and read with them from the Sermon on the Mount and tell me how their form of Christianity fits in with anything that Jesus said to do."
Ryan says this is an important question to ask, given the high number of Americans who self-identify as Christian, but support politicians who are arguably selective in their adherence to basic Christian tenets.
"I definitely think the film is doable, makeable, and could be really watchable," Ryan says.
