Atomic Filmmakers: Behind the Scenes (1999 Video) User Reviews

Fascinating and scary too

[zoelat · 10/10 · 27 February 2004]

I saw this today, as a "double feature" with "Trinity and Beyond", which is a marvellous history of the US nuclear bomb tests. It is an ideal way to get a sobering look at not only the horrors that were held up as the "protection of the world" but at the folly that took us all to the brink of destruction. "Atomic filmmakers" is breathtaking in observing the risks which were taken by the men (and women?) who were prepared to expose themselves to all sorts of unknown results from the hundreds of atomic explosions they filmed. To see them standing out in the open, only a few miles from the "ground zero" is astonishing. One of them is a man who lost several relatives in the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki! While "Atomic Cafe" is a fascinating and often hilarious look at the nuclear arms race, there is NOTHING funny about these two movies, but they are equally compelling.