Built by the US government to house the Hanford nuclear site workers who manufactured weapons-grade plutonium for the Manhattan Project, Richland, Washington is proud of its heritage as a nuclear company town and proud of the atomic bomb it helped create. RICHLAND offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely examination of the habits of thought that normalize the extraordinary violence of the past. Moving between archival past and observational present, and across encounters with nuclear workers, community members, archeologists, local tribes, and a Japanese granddaughter of atomic bomb survivors, the film blooms into an expansive and lyrical meditation on home, safety, whiteness, land, and deep time.
Join entertainment journalist Loren King, film director, producer, and editor Irene Lusztig, and film producer Sara Archmbault in a virtual discussion on September 16th, at 6:00 p.m. EST.
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Loren King is a freelance entertainment journalist, film critic and columnist for the past two decades, with numerous features and reviews published in: The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, the late great Boston Phoenix, Art New England, Filmmaker magazine, WBUR’s The ARTery, the Credits, Provincetown Banner, Boston Spirit magazine and Newport This Week, among others.
Irene is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and amateur seamstress whose work bridges the delicate space between people, their pasts, and the present. Beginning with rigorous archival research, she uses historical materials to spark conversations about politics, ideology, and the entanglement of personal, collective, and national memory. A first-generation American born in England and raised in Boston, her parents fled Ceaușescu’s Romania as political asylum-seekers. Her three feature-length films have screened internationally at venues such as the Berlinale, MoMA, BFI London Film Festival, and IDFA Amsterdam. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz.
Sara Archambault is a Creative Producer committed to bold, artful nonfiction films grounded in equity, care, collaboration, and justice. Her recent projects include RIOTSVILLE, USA, TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, A DECENT HOME, and the upcoming RICHLAND, with work supported by Sundance, SFFILM, Catapult Film Fund, and others. A 2020 Impact Partners Producing Fellow and SF DocFest Vanguard Awardee, her films have screened worldwide and won numerous honors. Beyond producing, she serves as Documentary Film Project Manager at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and previously led the LEF Foundation and The DocYard. She is active in the Documentary Producers Alliance, serves on The Flaherty’s board, and is a devoted art house cinema fan.
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