Saturday, February 17th
12:50 — 3:00pm
Naval Heritage Center
$11 IN ADVANCE HERE OR AT THE DOOR
Screens as part of Really Real Documentary Shorts
SAFSTOR
Directed by Adam Diller
USA / 2018 / 15 minutes
The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, located on the Susquehanna River, south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, experienced a partial meltdown on March 28th, 1979. For years afterwards the plant was too radioactive for investigators to collect adequate information to determine the exact nature of the accident. SAFSTOR, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s term for the deferred decontamination protocol in effect at Three Mile Island, is a 15-minute film contrasting the contemporary landscape of Three Mile Island with archival materials from the 1979 accident.
The film uses VHS recordings of cleanup inside the plant, still photographs of the control room during the meltdown, and archival audio recordings to highlight the complexity and confusion of the events as they occurred. The film weaves these historical documents into the texture of the landscape around the plant, focusing attention on Three Mile Island’s collision with its non-human surroundings. SAFSTOR provokes reflections on the unintended consequences of our infrastructure and frames the Three Mile Island plant as a remnant of 20th Century thinking in the process of being phased out. The film leads the audience to consider what role nuclear power plants have in our lives, what the plants will become as they are decommissioned, and how our thinking has changed since the 1979 accident.
Director Bio:
Adam Diller’s work explores the aesthetics of human and non-human environments through a practice informed by phonography, sensory ethnography, landscape film, and experimental narrative film. He has exhibited and performed in venues throughout the U.S. and abroad and in festivals such as Montreal Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Light Industries, Sonar (Barcelona), Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Seattle Improvised Music Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, and NW New Works. He has received grants from the City of Seattle, Jack Straw Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Meet the Composer, 4Culture, Washington Composers’ Forum, and residencies from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Saltonstall Foundation.
www.adamdiller.com/p/safstor.html
