SALA News:

• The story Oppenheimer leaves out comes to Los Alamos for the Oppenheimer Film Festival

Two Worlds Collide! “First We Bombed New Mexico” documentary feature film will screen Saturday Aug. 17 at SALA Los Alamos Event Center. This red carpet event begins with dinner at 5 p.m. and screening at 6 p.m. followed by a question and answer session.

Details: 

• Red Carpet event Saturday Aug. 17;
• Dinner at 5 p.m.;
• Screening at 6 p.m.;
• A sizzling Q&A promises to follow!;
• Nine screenings in all! (check the times);
• SALA Los Alamos Event Center – 2551 Central Ave.

This compelling award-winning documentary reveals the heartbreaking untold story of the Trinity nuclear test and its devastating impact on local communities.

Hispanic and Native residents lived as close as 12 miles from that blast. Their land and water was poisoned – multigenerational cancers followed and brutal  financial loss. The Lab (LANL) and the Government have not acknowledged this – yet – or apologized – or offered compensation.

Inspiring, unstoppable s-hero Tina Cordova, our film’s protagonist, is coming to Los Alamos to speak at the Q&A.

Also Dr. Arlene Brown – a compassionate family practitioner who practiced medicine for 40 years and saw the cancers in her patients. Dr. Brown grew up in Los Alamos. Her father was a scientist who worked with Oppenheimer to build the bomb. Her mother died from a leak at the Labs of radiation exposure. Also Lois Lipman the filmmaker and former Emmy winning field producer with 60 Minutes.

There are THREE NARRATIVES of Trinity. But the world has only heard TWO.

• We know the story of General Groves and the military.
• We know the story of Oppenheimer and the scientists.
• Finally, we hear the narrative of the people of New Mexico – a story of courage and heartbreak from Latina and Native residents who lost everything, who bear the hidden cost of the world’s first nuclear test – our nuclear origin story.

At a moment when LANL is about the build and test plutonium pits – and the world stands on a nuclear precipice.

Just today this film was awarded the Grand Jury Award at the Flagstaff Film Festival. Wherever it screens, audiences are deeply moved, they are shocked, engaged, enraged – and they ask – how could we not know! But screening in Los Alamos – nine times – is special.

“First We Bombed New Mexico is an urgent and timely expose of our governments shocking failure to recompense — or even acknowledge —  the victims of the Trinity A bomb, the ‘Downwinders’ who generation after generation have paid with their health and their lives. Lois Lipman’s powerful documentary, fueled by the righteous anger of activist and cancer survivor Tina Cordova, is a revelatory call to action.” –David Ansen Film Critic (former renowned Newsweek Film Critic)