Richland

The city of Richland was built by the US government to house workers producing plutonium for the Manhattan Project, resulting in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Richland tells the story behind this city, in archival footage, contemporary observations and conversations with nuclear workers, residents, archaeologists, local tribes and a granddaughter of Japanese survivors of the bombings. This makes the documentary a lyrical meditation on a sense of home, safety, whiteness and geological time.

TALK Richland is a city created in a couple of months for aggressive purposes. Some of the citizens criticise the nuclear bomb heritage. Others say: ‘proud of the cloud’. Either way, the residents have made ‘the bomb’ into their identity. With Dario Fazzi (Roosevelt Institute for American Studies) we discuss both the environmental impact of US nuclear power and the manifestation of nationalism in Richland. 

Language Talk: English