Uranium Derby

Movie Info

Synopsis

URANIUM DERBY centers around an experiment gone wrong—the American nuclear experiment. In the film, director Brittany Prater's investigation into her Iowa hometown's secret involvement in the Manhattan Project triggers a chain reaction of encounters through which it becomes clear that the topic of nuclear waste was more successfully buried than the waste itself. This film depicts the manner in which toxic nuclear waste, generated and collected in a few specific places, was allowed to spread to numerous sites around a small Midwestern university town and subsequently the country.

 

URANIUM DERBY shows how the problems associated with nuclear waste, first brought about by naive experimentation, were then compounded by a sense of denial. The culture of secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project extends into the present day as corporate interests and federal policy combine to hinder the cleanup of thousands of contaminated sites.

 

Brittany Prater

(Director/Producer/Editor) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in Queens, NY. In 2010 she received her MFA from Temple University and in 2006 her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. She is currently working as assistant Director at Studio10 gallery in Brooklyn and is the founder of Cornfield Productions LLC.

Prater has screened films, videos and other works in New York and internationally. Her work has been reviewed in ArtNews, The L Magazine and Hyperallergic as well as the Kansas City Star. In 2012 she received a grant from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities toward the completion of her first feature length documentary Uranium Derby