In 1951, six years after Hiroshima, the United States launched a campaign of atmospheric test firings in the Nevada desert. In seven years, the American military exploded more than a hundred atomic bombs in the area. The radioactive fallout from several of these tests spread over the inhabited regions of Utah, including a small town of 5,000 inhabitants: Saint George.
At the time, the American Department of Energy did everything it could to reassure the local population, even encouraging them to watch the explosions... The only recommendation: protect your eyes with dark glasses. Propaganda films even showed American soldiers on exercise, fearlessly marching towards the deadly mushroom cloud. Everyone was living in atomic time, with only one watchword: "it's safe!".
Forty years later, the inhabitants of Saint-George were still living with the after-effects of these atomic experiments. Cancers more numerous than elsewhere, leukemia, children with Down syndrome... With fatalism and resignation, the small town of Utah continued to bury its dead.
REPORTERS - Les Damnés De L'atome, June 1991 LA CINQ
Directed by Jean-Pierre Van Geirt
1991: 1st prize for the major report "Les Yeux d'Or" for "Les Damnés de l'Atome"