Blowing Up Paradise
(60 minutes) France
Director: Ben Lewis

Description:
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 danger, today this once pristine locale is contaminated by radiation and many of its inhabitants suffer from cancer and other diseases. Blowing up Paradise uses 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. They also demonstrate France's continuing denial of responsibility for the social devastation wrought, and its refusal to pay any compensation to former test workers. The film 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 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.

Biography:
Ben Lewis is an award-winning filmmaker based in London. His works include Baader Meinhof: In Love with Terror and The King of Communism: The Pomp and Pageantry of Nicolae Ceauceasu, for which he won the Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary in 2002.

Contact Information:
Ben Lewis, Director/Producer
302 Beaux-Arts†Manor Gardens†
London N7 6JW
England
b.lewis@onetel.net

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