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6 Nuclear Yellow Oscars go to 6 Countries

Uranium Film Festival ends with Samba of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Favela Mangueira, where Rio´s Samba was born

In typical Brazilian style with Samba and Caipirinha Magnifica ended the 3rd International Uranium Film Festival of Rio Janeiro 2013 in the cinema of the Modern Art Museum (MAM). A band of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Favela Mangueira, where Rio´s popular Samba was born, played for the selected audience with the presence of Atomic Bomb Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the festival winners. In total six Films from six countries - Russia, India, USA, Estonia, Jordan and Germany - were honored with the Uranium Film Festival’s trophy, the Yellow Oscar. Between May 16th and May 26 the festival screened 52 documentaries and fiction movies from 19 countries. 

The six award recipients are:

Best Feature Fiction Movie: 

ATOMIC IVAN – Russia, 2012, 91 min, Director Vasily Barkhatov, Executive producer, Viktoria Gromik, TELESTO FILM 

Best Feature Documentary: 

NUCLEAR SAVAGE: The Islands of Secret Project - USA, 2012, 87 min, Adam Jonas Horowitz

Best Short Comedy: 

CURIOSITY KILLS - Estonia, 2012, 14 min, Sander Maran

Best Short Documentary: 

HIGH POWER – India, 2013, 27 min, Pradeep Indulkar

(World premiere)

Best Animated Film: 

ABITA – Germany, 2012, 4 min, Shoko Hara, Paul Brenner

Best Student Film: 

NO TO A NUCLEAR JORDAN – Jordan, 2012, 7 min, Solenne Tadros

Yellow Oscar Award to Atomic Ivan

“Atomic Ivan” is the Best Feature Fiction Movie of the Third International Uranium Film Festival 2013. The 2012 produced film Atomic Ivan by VASILY BARKHATOV from Russia won the Yellow Oscar 2013 in Rio de Janeiro. The romantic comedy “Atomic Ivan” is a debut film of famous theatre director Vasiliy Barkhatov from Moscow based on the script of world-known playwright Maxim Kurochkin. The Shooting of the film took place at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant, about 200 km North West of Moscow, and at the Leningrad Power Plant 70 km close to St Petersburg. It was the first time that Russian’s nuclear agencies opened their doors to filmmakers. 

"Atomic Ivan is a combination of Visual Art, Comedy, Love Story and pure Nuclear Science", says Festival Director Norbert G. Suchanek. "Atomic love at a Russian power plant. Atomic Ivan is a beautiful, intelligent, romantic comedy, in the surrealistic stile that remembers me on Federico Fellini." 

Suchanek: "The basic Story of Atomic Ivan is simple. The director of a nuclear power plant invites an Artist to develop a play together with the nuclear workers at the nuclear power plant. Imagine: A Fellini opera in a real nuclear power plant. Beside of all that the films transports important worth full scientific information about nuclear power and radioactivity. So there was no way! This film had to win a Yellow Oscar of the Uranium Film Film Festival 2013." 

The Executive producer of Atomic Ivan, Miss Viktoria Gromik from TELESTO FILM was present at the Award Ceremony in the Cinemateca of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) Rio de Janeiro. She said: "It is very important for us to receive this Award from the Uranium Film Festival Rio de Janeiro."

Yellow Oscar to Nuclear Savage

The November 2011 released documentary “NUCLEAR SAVAGE: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1” by US-Filmmaker Adam Jonas Horowitz is extraordinary. A brilliant accusation against a terrible crime, done by the Government of the USA. Atmospheric Testing of Atomic Bombs and using local populations as guinea pigs are crimes against humanity. 

Adam Jonas Horowitz shot his first film in the Marshall Islands in 1986, and was shocked by what he found there, in this former American military colony in middle of the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive coconuts, leaking nuclear waste repositories and densely populated slums were all the direct result of 67 Cold War U.S. nuclear bomb tests that vaporized islands and devastated entire populations.

Yellow Oscar to High Power

The 2013 finalized documentary “High Power” is an important, well made film that can give worthwhile impulses to current “nuclear question” in India. For that it received the Yellow Oscar in the category best short documentary of the 3rd International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro 2013. 

Pradeep Indulkar, director of "High Power", is an Indian engineer, who has been working during 12 years for India's nuclear program. High Power tells the disturbing story of the local population of Tarapur in the state of Maharashtra, where India’s first nuclear power plant was constructed in the 1960s. Local fishermen families lost there land, their fishing grounds and health. Pradeep Indulkar´s short documentary about the Tarapur Atomic Power Station had to be made. “It is an important, the nuclear discussion stimulating documentary, that comes at the right time, when thousands of people in South-India struggle against a new nuclear power plant at Kudankulam is the state of Tamil Nadu”, says Festival director Norbert G. Suchanek. “High Power is Pradeep Indulkar´s first documentary, and we hope to see more documentaries by him in future.”

“Apart from all the sorrows and distress my film brought to you, this is a golden moment of my life as a film maker”, said Pradeep Indulkar during the Award Ceremony in the Museum of Modern Art cinema. “At this moment I remember and thank all my friends and well-wisher who helped in making of High Power. I also thank to all those Indian people who contributed even a smallest amount to make our trip happened. I thank you all who supported this film with as a great audience. I thank Rio, I thank Brazil and I accept this award on behalf of all the nuclear affected people of Tarapur and I dedicate this award to all those farmers and fishermen who lost their land, home and life for nuclear power plant. “

Yellow Oscar to Curiosity Kills

Sander Maran is a young, promising filmmaker from Estonia. His 2012 produced short comedy ”Curiosity Kills” already received the Audience Award of Helsinki’s H2T Festival. Now it won the Yellow Oscar of the third International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro in the category “Best short comedy”. Synopsis: “A 10 year old boy is fascinated by his father's spooky looking chemistry suitcase and decides to play with its contents. One thing leads to another and the boy's pet rat ends up attacking the family. Curiosity kills.” 

“Films about radioactivity are normally boring for teenager and students”, says festival director Norbert G. Suchanek. “Curiosity Kills is different. It is trashy comedy, which made the festival Audience, mainly students from upper-class colleges, love and scream. And beside of that, curiosity kills gives valuable information: Radioactivity is dangerous and can change the genetic code of living beings. And every radioactive material must be stored and handled with great care. If not, the consequences can be terrible.”

Yellow Oscar to Abita

The best Animated Film of Rio de Janeiro’s Uranium Film Festival 2013 is, ABITA, a beautiful animated film directed and produced 2012 in Germany by Shoko Hara and Paul Brenner from the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart. This animated short film deals with the dreams of Fukushima children who can’t play outside because of radioactive contamination. Brazilian Professor for animated film and festival judge Leo Ribeiro: “I selected Abita, because it is a very poetic and sensitive movie and very well done.”

Yellow Oscar to No to Nuclear Jordan

Best Student Film of the 3rd International Uranium Film Festival is “NO TO A NUCLEAR JORDAN” by young director Solenne Tadros from the International Academy-Amman. Student productions about nuclear issues are still very rare - especially in the Middle East. The Yellow Oscar 2013 is given to Solenne Tadros to stimulate other film students and film schools world-wide to follow here example to deal with this for human mankind important but very complicated and often risky nuclear issue. In addition the festival jury hopes that “No to Nuclear Jordan” will improve the public discussion about Nuclear Energy in the Kingdom of Jordan, where the construction of nuclear power plants and uranium mining are in the planning.

About the Yellow Oscar

Yellow is the color of Uranium and therefore a symbol of the nuclear industry and radioactivity. The Yellow Oscar, the trophy of the Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro is a "piece of art" made by the famous contemporary waste-artist Getúlio Damado of Saint Teresa. Getúlio Damado´s Art, made from the waste of Brazil consumer society is part of several exhibitions not only in Rio de Janeiro, but also in São Paulo and other cultural centers of Brazil. Currently he work is part of the exhibition "Design in the Periphery" in the Pavilion of Brazilian Cultures, in the famous Parque Ibirapuera of São Paulo. Getúlio Damado lives and works in Rio de Janeiro Artist quarter Santa Teresa, where the Uranium Film Festival has its office and where it started in the year 2011.

Uranium Film Festival

Rua Monte Alegre 356 / 301

Santa Teresa

Rio de Janeiro / RJ

CEP 20.240-194

Brasil

Email: info@uraniumfilmfestival.org

www.uraniumfilmfestival.org

Speech of the festival's director Norbert G. Suchanek at the Award Ceremony

Art, Science, Cinema! These are the three Elements that the film festival and the nuclear filmmakers are using the explain the unexplainable, to show the invisible. As you may have seen in the trailer. Radioactivity is invisible. You can not see it. It has no color, it has no smell, it has no flavor - and though it is dangerous. Modern society is using this invisible power in many ways. In atomic bombs, in nuclear power plants, in nuclear Medicine, in taking simple x-Ray images, in irradiating food for conservation purposes. Every day we are producing radioactive Waste. This dangerous waste is not only produced by nuclear power plants,

radioactive Waste it is also produced during mining and Oil and Gas Drilling. Today’s steel production uses Radiation to continuous measurement of thickness at every stage of production. Even the Beer and Soft drink industry uses radiation to measure the level of liquid in cans.

Radiation is all around us. We should know about the risks. With better education of the Brazilian population, the terrible radioactive accident of Goiânia in 1987 would not have happened. For that we created the Uranium film Festival, the in the world only film festival that deals with all kind of nuclear issues. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Goiânia and Fukushima shall never happen again.

This year we had only a very short period to organize the festival in Rio. That has only one Cause. The Cause is Mr. Shri Prakash from Ranchi. This exceptional Indian filmmaker expanded to Uranium Film Festival to India and insisted that we bring the festival to ten cities in India. New Delhi, Shillong, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Thrissur, Bangalore, Manipal and finally to Mumbai, the home of the famous Bollywood. 

　

About the Uranium Film Festival

Art and Awareness: The International Uranium Film festival was founded in 2011 in Santa Teresa, the famous artist quarter in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The aim of the festival is to inform the public, from a neutral position, about nuclear power, uranium mining, nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactivity. The horror of atomic bombs and those who suffered from them and nuclear accidents like Chernobyl or Fukushima should never be forgotten - nor repeated. The correlation between nuclear energy and weapons must be openly discussed. The festival inspires discourse about the health and environmental risks of radioactive materials and waste. We seek to educate and activate the public on these issues. The dynamic media of film is an important tool to bring that information to a diverse international public.

Since its inception, the Uranium Film Festival has enhanced public awareness of new productions of independent documentaries and movies about the nuclear fuel chain and radioactive issues. The nuclear world has produced over 200,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste during the past sixty years. This waste will remain hazardous for 100,000 years - yet there are no viable solutions for its safe, permanent disposal. It is our responsibility to inform societies and future generations about the dangers of radioactivity. We believe that public education and open discussion of these dangers will lead to a more peaceful, healthy future. Filmmaking and the Uranium Film Festival are tools to inform future generations - and to promote a safe, sustainable future without nuclear risks.

After premiering in Rio de Janeiro, the Festival travels to other major cities in Brazil and other countries. In past years it has traveled to São Paulo, Recife, Salvador, Fortaleza and to Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, to Berlin in Germany, and to ten major cities in India including New Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. 

The legal organizer of the Uranium Film Festival is the non-profit arts and educational organization “Yellow Archives” (Arquivo Amarelo). This charitable organization is registered in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the Brazilian Government. Partners and supporters of the Uranium Film Festival 2013 are the Heinrich Boell Foundation Brazil, Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art MAM-Rio and the Technical State School for TV, Cinema, Tourism and Events - Adolpho Bloch of the Foundation for Education and Science FAETEC, the Italian Cultural Institute of Rio de Janeiro, the Bar do Mineiro e Armazém São Thiago in Santa Teresa and Rio de Janeiro´s traditional Cachaça Magnífica.