Business Wire
Documentary “Downwind,” available on demand from most streaming services, offers an in-depth look into the impact the federal government’s testing of nuclear weapons has had, particularly on those who lived near testing sites.
Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Millions of people bought tickets this summer to see “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. The first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and a second bomb was dropped a few days later, on Nagasaki, Japan.
While the bombs are credited by some with ending World War II, as Japan surrendered shortly after the atomic weapons were dropped, the long-term effects of the radioactive fallout unleashed by detonating nuclear weapons is a subject the movie didn’t delve into, which has drawn some criticism.
However, a new documentary, “Downwind,” takes an in-depth look into the devastating impact the American government’s testing of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil has had, particularly on those unfortunate enough to live near testing sites, and potentially in people far beyond those borders.
“Downwind” is co-directed by Mark Shapiro, who lives in Portland and earlier worked in brand management and marketing for Laika animation studio, as well as serving as a communications manager for Nike. Shapiro’s fellow director, Douglas Brian Miller, is based in California, and has worked as a director of photography on documentaries for film and TV.
In a phone interview, Shapiro and Miller talked about how they became interested in the subject of nuclear tests in America, and how for years the government downplayed the effects of radioactive fallout.
Shapiro recalls how he and Miller, who have collaborated on various projects over the years, became intrigued by a magazine report about “The Conqueror,” a 1956 movie produced by Howard Hughes that starred John Wayne in the unlikely role of Genghis Khan.
The movie was filmed in Utah in 1954, in locations a little over 100 miles from the Nevada Test Site, which was about 65 miles north of Las Vegas, and was the place where hundreds of above and below-ground nuclear tests were conducted, from 1951 through 1992.
As Patrick Wayne, son of the iconic star, says in an interview for “Downwind,” at the time “The Conqueror” was filmed, the nuclear tests were kept quiet, and those involved in the film didn’t know they were working in an area that had been dusted with, as the film says, some of the highest levels of radioactive fallout ever recorded in United State history.
A large number of people who worked on “The Conqueror,” including Wayne, ultimately died of complications related to cancer. In “Downwind,” Patrick Wayne acknowledges that some of the people involved in the making of “The Conqueror” smoked, but he suggests that the number of cancer-related fatalities suffered by members of “The Conqueror” cast and crew was still remarkable.
From this early interest, “We dove deeper into the research,” Shapiro says. They found that, from 1951 through 1992, the U.S. detonated 928 nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site.
“Downwind” looks at how miscalculated wind forecasts, government proclamations that radiation exposure wasn’t a serious health threat, and revelations from now-declassified documents referring to those who lived near the test site as a “low use segment of the population” potentially contributed to illnesses suffered by Americans who were never warned about the dangers of living near the test sites.
The film includes participation from some recognizable names, including actor Martin Sheen, who narrates; animation by Bill Plympton, who grew up in Oregon; actor-producer Michael Douglas, who recalls the uncanny similarities between his film, “The China Syndrome,” and the real-life partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor; comedian and commentator Lewis Black; and actor Matthew Modine, who is an executive producer.
Most affecting, however, are interviews filmed with some of the people who have been directly impacted by being “Downwinders,” and have become activists trying to draw attention to the dangers of exposure to radioactive fallout.
Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, for example, speaks with emotion about how the Nevada Test Site was located on Shoshone land, and how the soil, the water, and the people have all been affected, a process Zabarte calls “disgustingly shameful.”
“I was shocked this was allowed,” says “Downwind” co-director Miller. “The more we found out, the more we were throwing our arms in the air.”
Shapiro and Miller say that, while the Cold War that followed the end of World War II was a time when the U.S. was engaged in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, the years of nuclear weapons testing “came at a cost,” as Miller says.
Another striking element of “Downwind” are clips from films produced by Lookout Mountain Laboratory, which operated generally in secret as a Hollywood film studio that was a unit of the U.S. Air Force and churned out films that, among other things, tended to downplay the impact of exposure to radioactive fallout.
“We didn’t know what it was,” Shapiro says of the studio. But they discovered that Lookout Mountain Laboratory projects tended to deliver the message that, as Shapiro says, “everything is safe. You could argue that it was another part of this whole government collaboration, to make sure that the narrative of the Cold War was strictly in hand.”
Since “Downwind” has been shown at film festivals and became available to rent on streaming services, Shapiro says the filmmakers have been hearing from lots of people either interested in or close to the topic, including, as Shapiro says, “folks from Hanford,” the Washington state site that was established in 1943 “as part of the Manhattan Project to produce plutonium for national defense,” as the U.S. Department of Energy describes it.
Both Shapiro and Miller say they hope “Downwind” will help raise awareness about the decades of nuclear testing that many still don’t know about.
“We can’t repeat the past,” says Miller. “We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
“When I think about our film, and the people that we met, the things that have happened to their families and their tremendous loss,” Shapiro says, he’s inspired by the sense of mission that has led people to become advocates for so-called “Downwinders.”
Activists have pushed for expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a government program that allows “partial restitution to individuals who developed serious illnesses after presumed exposure to radiation released during the atmospheric nuclear tests or after employment in the uranium industry,” as the U.S. Department of Justice defines it.
“When Doug and I left each of those interviews,” Shapiro says, “We felt so inspired, and we wanted to really tell an important story.”
“Downwind” is available to rent or buy on demand from most in-home cable providers, including Comcast; Verizon; and Cox. The documentary is also available to rent or purchase on iTunes; Amazon Prime Video; Google Play; and more.
