Building Bombs

Streaming video - 1989

Offering rare archival footage and a deceptively upbeat atmosphere, this Oscar nominated film delves into the lives of a community gripped by the ultimate weapon of mass destruction – the hydrogen bomb. Pastoral Aiken, South Carolina is home to the Savannah River Plant, the epicenter of America’s top-secret atomic bomb-making apparatus. Within this nuclear company town, directors Mark Mori and Susan Robinson blow open a cover-up of massive radioactive waste dumping carried out under the shroud of national security. Profiling a diverse cast of outspoken community members, from a physicist-turned-peace-activist, a politician who speechifies on the good jobs created by the plant, and a worker whose body courses with radioactive particles, ...BUILDING BOMBS artfully grapples with the profound realities of a world filled with nukes by listening closely to those who must live day-to-day in the shadow of the H-bomb. more