Tag Archives: nuclear

Nuked: Fallout on the Forgotten Shore

Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. detonated 23 nuclear weapons over Bikini Atoll, unleashing a firestorm that would poison four generations. Nuked resurrects the suppressed history of the Cold War’s first victims – the Bikinian people, torn from paradise and condemned to wander a radioactive diaspora.

Through meticulously restored archival footage, the film amplifies the voices of those who watched their ancestral home become ground zero, juxtaposing their testimonies against the terrifying spectacle of mushroom clouds that once lit up the Pacific sky. As climate change now drowns their exile settlements beneath rising seas, the displaced fight a dual battle: against the ghosts of nuclear imperialism and the rising tides of an indifferent world.

A searing indictment of colonial power and a rallying cry for justice, Nuked asks: When the land itself becomes a weapon, where does survival begin?

Taiwan: On the Brink of War

Taiwan: On the Brink of War explores the threat of war with China, explaining how the conflict has already gotten underway as China directs grey-zone conflict, disinformation and other measures at Taiwan, fomenting political polarization.

It delves China’s demands to unify Taiwan with what it calls the Chinese Motherland, and how this is part of a larger project including Hong Kong. The film finds China’s harsh control of Hong Kong’s has rebounded on Taiwan, whose fate hinges on Beijing’s choices and the state of the US-China rivalry.

But Taiwan is taking its future in its own hands, and, even if it may be wanting in military readiness, Taiwan is growing stronger. Many civilians are also girding themselves for war, having learned lessons from Ukraine’s clash with Russia.

The Coming War on China

The Coming War on China, from award winning journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn’t – that the world’s greatest military power, the United States, and the world’s second economic power, China, both nuclear-armed, may well be on the road to war. 

Nuclear war is not only imaginable, but planned. The greatest build-up of NATO military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China is viewed in Washington as a threat to American dominance. 

To counter this, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’, which meant that almost two-thirds of all US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific, their weapons aimed at China. A policy which has been taken up by his successor Donald Trump, who during his election campaign said “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing”.

Filmed on five possible front-lines across Asia and the Pacific over two years, the story is told in chapters that connect a secret and ‘forgotten’ past to the rapacious actions of great power today and to a resistance, of which little is known in the West.

Television Event

At the height of the cold war, broadcaster ABC set about making a made-for-TV movie about the effects of a nuclear bomb on the ordinary American people, little knowing the obstacles and opposition they would face during its production, and the eduring impact it would have once broadcast – both in the US and in Russia.

With irreverent humor and sobering apocalyptic vision, Television Event reveals how a commercial broadcaster seized a moment of unprecedented television viewership, made an emotional connection with an audience of over 100 million and forced an urgent conversation with the US President on how to collectively confront and resolve the most pressing issue of the time – nuclear proliferation.

They narrowly succeeded in producing the most watched, most controversial made-for-TV movie ever, THE DAY AFTER (1983), that may also have played a part in averting nuclear war.

Fukushima’s Nuclear Legacy

Ten years later, the scars of the earthquake and nuclear disaster are still visible in Fukushima, Japan.

Today, the population of Fukushima prefecture remains 180,000 less than before the triple disaster.