Nuclear Nightmares

Iran: The Hundred Year War(fr)

What kind of world power is Iran becoming, and how will Western countries deal with it?

A Very Animated War(de)

From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

Gander International: The Airport in the Middle of Nowhere(en)

In 1938 an airfield was built at the northeastern-most end of America, the descent went slowly but incessantly through the Cold War. This is the story of how its inhabitants gradually moved away from the great world stage and had to reinvent themselves as well as their home town.

Le IIIe Reich n'aura pas la bombe(fr)

Windscale: Britain's Biggest Nuclear Disaster(en)

Film revealing how political ambition fuelled the Windscale fire of 1957 and then dictated that the heroes of Windscale be made the scapegoats.

Stockpile: The New Nuclear Menace(en)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of a nuclear war between the USA and Russia has diminished, but the threat posed by nuclear weapons and materials on both sides has increased. As nuclear weapons age, they become unstable and begin to behave in unpredictable ways. This film is the first to go behind the scenes in Arzamas-16 - the Russian nuclear city so secret that it has never appeared on any map - and the American nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to see Russian and American bomb designers working together to reduce the risk. Exclusive archive material.

Closing Gambit: 1978 Korchnoi versus Karpov and the Kremlin(en)

The story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.

Mystery Man of the A-Bomb(en)

Stories of the people who built the first atomic weapons are well known. But what about those who provided the uranium? We look at a mysterious man who derived huge profits from the business of war.

Radio Bikini(en)

It starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.

Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment(en)

This 1991 Academy Award®-winning documentary uncovers the disastrous health and environmental side effects caused by the production of nuclear materials by the General Electric Corporation.

Mission to Mir(en)

This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.

The World's Biggest Bomb Revealed(en)

National Geographic 2011 Documentary on the World's Biggest Bomb (UK).

The Atom And Us(en)

The Cars We Drove into Capitalism(bg)

A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream. The freedom that these slow and clumsy vehicles were giving to their owners; the cars as an instrument in the Cold War battle; legends and homemade tune-ups as an attempt to stand at least a little bit off the crowd.

The Man Who Saved the World(en)

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Soviet Navy officer Vasily Arkhipov refused to launch a nuclear strike and saved the world from nuclear war and total destruction.

Combat in the Air - The Air Defense of North America(en)

Combat in the Air - Attack Helikopters(en)

Combat in the Air - Search and Rescue(en)

Nukes in Space(en)

U.S. nuclear tests in space, and the development of the military intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The Wall(en)

Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.