September 20, 2021  |  8:00 pm  |   Oakland Library Dimond Branch

Join us at the 2021 Oakland International Film Festival for an outdoor (socially-distanced) screening of the powerful film Atomic Cover-up.

Atomic Cover-up is the first documentary to explore the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 from the unique perspective, words, and startling images of the brave cameramen and directors who risked their lives filming in the irradiated aftermath. It reveals how this historic footage, created by a Japanese newsreel crew and then an elite U.S. Army team, was seized, classified top secret, and then buried by American officials for decades to hide the full human costs of the bombings as a costly nuclear arms race raged.

The film is based entirely on the first-hand accounts of key members of the film crews (from the man who shot an early Akira Kurosawa movie to a pioneering American TV director) and the first vivid 4K transfers of their footage—much of it appearing in an American documentary for the first time—as well as long-hidden official records which document the suppression. These rich, vital materials are carefully assembled for haunting effect and maximum relevance for today as nuclear dangers reach peak intensity and official “cover-ups” expand.

The film’s director, Greg Mitchell, is the author of a dozen books and co-producer of the acclaimed documentary, Following the Ninth. He has served as chief adviser to several documentaries, including Original Child Bomb (winner of the top prize at Silverdocs) and the Emmy Award-winning The Great Depression. His books include the 2016 bestseller The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall (slated to be a movie from FilmNation) and The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, selected by Vanity Fair as one of the “21 Best Books of 2020.” His previous books on the atomic bombings include Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton). An earlier book The Campaign of the Century won the Goldsmith Book prize and in 2019 was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of five greatest books ever written about an American campaign.

Directions:

Oakland Library Dimond Branch, 3565 Fruitvale Ave, Oakland, CA

OIFF screenings on September 20 are presented by the Oakland Film Society in partnership with the Dimond Improvement Association and Oakland Library Dimond Branch. JPRI is co-sponsor for the screening of Atomic Cover-up.