By Ben Lewis
For thirty years, despite worldwide protests, the idyllic Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia was used as a site for France's nuclear tests. Despite repeated assurances by the French government that the blasts posed no environmental or health dangers, today this once environmentally pristine locale is contaminated by radiation and many of its inhabitants suffer from skin ailments, cancer, and leukemia, among other diseases.
BLOWING UP PARADISE uses color archival footage to chronicle France's explosion of various nuclear devices, in violation of the international test ban treaty, from the first test in 1966 to the last in 1995. Interviews with former and current French government officials, scientists, and nuclear advisors illuminate France's political agenda of the era as well as its continuing denial of responsibility for the social devastation wrought and its refusal to pay any compensation to former test workers.
The film also vividly portrays the protests of French nuclear policy in the region, including the actions of a Polynesian anti-nuclear terrorist group, riots in the streets of Moruroa, and years of anti-nuclear activism by Greenpeace environmentalists.
BLOWING UP PARADISE also shows the increasingly aggressive French efforts to counter such efforts. In the most notable incident, in 1985, the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" was bombed and sunk by the French Secret Service, resulting in the death of a Greenpeace activist. In a later violent incident, as seen in amateur video recorded by those on board, 150 armed French Marines stormed a Greenpeace ship and arrested its crew members.
BLOWING UP PARADISE reveals that the Moruroa Atoll, having undergone a complete social transformation, is today a politically destabilized society. The area remains a militarized zone and has been described by scientists as a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even worse, it is predicted that radiation leakages will eventually occur. BLOWING UP PARADISE thus becomes an atomic version of Paradise Lost, with the 'sins' of past nuclear tests wreaking potentially global catastrophe in the future.
Reviews
~ "Highly Recommended!" - Educational Media Reviews Online
~ "Pick of the Day! shows how General de Gaulle's dream of establishing France as a superpower lead to decades of atomic tests in the south Pacific." - The Guardian
~ "Sure to get pulse rates racingˇ the reality speaks for itself." - Sydney Morning Herald
~ "Remarkableˇcompellingˇone of the best documentaries on the atomic age to appear in a very long timeˇideal for classroom use." - H-France
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