Virtual Screenings & Discussion
Cultural Resistance: Standing Up to Nuclear Power Through the Arts

Tue, 03/30/2021
1:00 PM via Zoom

The Goethe-Institut Washington, DC, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Washington, DC and Beyond Nuclear will present four events during 2021, in a year that marks 10 years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and 35 years since the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The series will showcase different examples of both mass protest and deeply personal resistance. This series explores how the performing and visual arts, including film, music, theatre, fashion and painting — along with protest and resistance — can make a powerful statement of opposition to nuclear power and propel action against climate change.

The opening event — Defiance on Film — features the directors and protagonists from two new documentary films: 33 Days of Utopia (2020, Germany) and The Beekeeper (2020, United Kingdom). An online discussion-style event will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, March 30, at 1pm Eastern US time, with pre-screenings of both films available free to those who register.

When you reply using the Register button on the Eventbrite invitation, you will automatically receive a link to register for the Zoom Webinar in the confirmation email. Once you register via zoom, you will receive the virtual screening links to both films to view in advance of the webinar.

To recap: The registration process is: Eventbrite > Zoom > Screening Links. This multi-layered registration approach is for security purposes. We thank you for your cooperation!
RSVP The German documentary, 33 Days of Utopia, literally digs up history, as an archeologist unearths artifacts that were part of a 1980 encampment of 800 people who created their own “utopia” as they protested a proposed nuclear waste dump at Gorleben. Theirs is a story of mass solidarity and of community, of mutual support and affinity.

Trailer in German - Film will have English subtitles. 84 min.

The Beekeeper features Katie Hayward, a beekeeper in North Wales, who stood almost alone in her fight not make way for the bulldozers that would destroy her farm in preparation for a new two-reactor nuclear site at Wylfa-B on the island of Anglesey. Rejected by her neighbors who sold out to the nuclear company, Horizon (Hitachi), Hayward spirals in and out of depression and near suicide as she navigates her one-woman battle to save her bees, her farm animals, and the ancestral land she loves.

Trailer in English. Film will be in English. 12 min.

Due to restrictions with the distributor, 33 Days of Utopia is geo-blocked and will be unavailable in all German-speaking and French-speaking countries. We regret the inconvenience and nevertheless encourage interested participants from these countries to join our discussion anyway, and to watch The Beekeeper, which is available worldwide.

The March 30 event will feature 33 Days of Utopia director, Roswitha Ziegler; Rebecca Harms, who participated in the Gorleben encampment and went on to become a Green Party Member of the European Parliament; Attila Dészi, archaeologist at the University of Hamburg; Anglesey beekeeper, Katie Hayward; and Will McGregor, director of The Beekeeper. The ‘round table’ discussion will be moderated by Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter, followed by questions from the audience.

Guests

William McGregor is a writer and director hailing from rural Norfolk, England. His 2019 debut feature film Gwen, 'a red raw piece of class conscious folk horror' (Danny Leigh), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, won two Welsh BAFTAs, and is British Independent Film Award-nominated, longlisted in 11 categories. McGregor is currently co-writing Smile, a vampire revenge thriller for Netflix. McGregor is also attached to direct the Stephen Spielberg produced ghost story The Bells. His script for his second BFI-backed feature film Gun Dog, a rural revenge thriller, was selected for the last round of the Sundance Script lab 2021. His short film work includes Bovine (Berlinale 2010) and Who's Afraid of the Water Sprite? (Royal Television Society Award for Best Student Drama 2009), and the award-winning environmental documentary The Beekeeper (Tallinn Black Nights 2020).

Katie Hayward runs a multi-award-winning honeybee farm on the coast of Anglesey, Wales, which her family have tenanted intermittently since 1532. In 2017, her idyllic farm, its rescued animals, and its honeybees became threatened by the design of a new nuclear power station due to be built nearby. Hayward's expertise in beekeeping extends to using beekeeping as a therapy to help people overcome challenges in their life – from women who have overcome domestic violence, to helping children to stop self-harming. Her fight against the establishment of a Hitachi nuclear site is chronicled in William McGregor's new short documentary.

Roswitha Ziegler is a filmmaker from Nürtingen, Germany, who completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller before studying photography and documentary film at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. In 1975, together with Niels Bolbrinker, Ziegler founded the Wendland Film Cooperative for the realization of critical and committed documentaries and film essays, which also produced seven films specifically on the subject of nuclear power (with 33 Days of Utopia being the newest). Ziegler has conceived and realized documentaries for ARTE, ZDF, NDR, and WDR since the 1970s. Previous anti-nuclear documentaries include Zwischenzeit (1985) and Noch hier schon da (2015).

Attila Dézsi is an archaeologist currently working on his Ph.D. about the archaeology of the contemporary past at sites of recent and ongoing protest. With a collaborative approach, he has engaged with the local community to explore the former anti-nuclear protest site "Free Republic of Wendland," which opposed a nuclear waste facility near Gorleben and constructed a vision of an alternative future. In 33 Days of Utopia, he reflects upon the impact of this archaeological intervention on the current memory culture and the heritage status of the site.

Rebecca Harms has always placed great importance on fighting against nuclear power. A gardener by profession, Harms was one of the cofounders of a citizen's group combating the nuclear waste disposal in Gorleben. For several years, she was chairperson for this group. In the 1980s, Harms became active in the Green Party. Also being a member of the "Wendländische Filmcooperative" (Film Cooperative of Wendland), Rebecca Harms contributed to numerous documentaries. In 1994, she was elected to the regional parliament in Lower Saxony, where she was elected chairperson of the green parliamentary group in 1998. Since 1998, she has been a member of the party council of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. In 2004, Harms became a member of the European Parliament, where she has been the president of the Greens/EFA since 2009. She is member of the Conference of Presidents and substitute member of the committee Industry, Research and Energy, of the committee Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and of the Committee Fisheries. In addition, she is member of Delegation Ukraine in the European parliament.