SUBJECTS

Atomic bomb -- Safety measures, Atomic bomb -- Social aspects -- United States, Civil defense -- United States, Nuclear bomb shelters, Nuclear energy -- Government policy -- United States, Radioactive fallout

The Atomic Cafe

Digital Restoration

In Conversation

  • Jayne Loader is a writer and director based in Portola Valley, California.

  • Rick Prelinger is an archivist, writer, filmmaker, and professor at UC Santa Cruz.

Guests will be in person for the September 7 screening only.

Duck and cover: The Atomic Cafe is back. Released in the age of Ronald “Nuclear Cowboy” Reagan and restored in time for yet another outbreak of atomic anxiety, this found-footage documentary is a blast of nuke nostalgia with a long half-life. It begins with images from the 1945 Trinity test and goes on to trace the decades-long fallout of the Bomb on American culture. Collaging together stark archival evidence with jauntily delusional propaganda about how to survive the coming apocalypse, the film is both a deft history of the Cold War and a comic essay on the American knack for turning tragedy and terror into kitsch. 

Juliet Clark
FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 86 mins
Source
  • Kino Lorber
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View The Atomic Cafe documents  

The Atomic Cafe (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 1989

The Atomic Cafe (program note), Athens International Film and Video Festival, 1983

The Atomic Cafe (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 1983

White light, white heat (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 1982

Titters and jitters in the Atomic Cafe (review), East Bay Express, Kelly Vance, 1982

The Atomic Cafe (program note), Los Angeles International Film Exposition, Paul Scanlon, 1982

The Atomic Cafe (program note), London Film Festival, 1982

The Atomic Cafe (review), Variety, Binn., 1982

The Atomic Cafe (postcard), IMAGE Film/Video Center, 1982

The Atomic Cafe (flyer), Surf Theatres

Displaying 10 of 12 publicly available documents.


View all The Atomic Cafe documentation on CineFiles.