After two sold out screenings, the documentary FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO continued its outstanding festival run at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) earlier this month. After winning Best of Fest at the Palm Springs International Festival in January, SBIFF added a third screening of the documentary due to popular demand.
FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO exposes the multigenerational cancers and abandonment suffered by communities in New Mexico since the 1945 Trinity Bomb detonation there. A history of nuclear colonialism and environmental racism in New Mexico surfaces as the impact the secret Trinity Bomb inflicted on its residents of color is revealed. Amid resurging domestic and global nuclear threats, the film starkly reminds audiences that radiation doesn’t respect national borders. It brings home the frightening realization that we are all downwinders.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO’
“We had amazing screenings here,” shared Tina Cordova, the primary participant in FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO. Cordova is a survivor of cancer caused by her proximity to the Trinity Site. “It’s been very well-received and the film festival is remarkable. We hope that we’ll get the attention of the people who have made OPPENHEIMER so that they can support the rest of the narrative that hasn’t been told.”
Christopher Nolan’s latest film chronicles J. Robert Oppenheimer’s journey to building the atomic bomb and testing it in New Mexico seventy years ago. However, it fails to acknowledge the steep price that Americans, and most acutely New Mexicans, paid for the success of the Manhattan Project.
WATCH OUR INTERVIEW WITH ‘FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO’ FILMMAKERS LOIS LIPMAN & TINA CORDOVA
“There was so much energy in the audience,” said Lois Lipman, the documentary’s director/producer. “We just felt a lot of support…to get in the spotlight of SBIFF is helping to launch our film so it’s seen in a much wider audience. That’s what we need.”
FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO is a sort-of homecoming for documentary participant Kat Douglas. Douglas, a Santa Barbara native, tragically lost her husband to cancer due to radiation exposure when he lived near the Trinity Bomb site.
WATCH OUR RED CARPET INTERVIEW WITH ‘FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO’ PARTICIPANT KAT DOUGLAS
“The screening was phenomenal,” raved Douglas. “This [SBIFF] is the fifth of the film festivals we’ve done, it’s been very well-received.”
HOW TO TAKE ACTION
Douglas, Cordova, and others are fighting to renew RECA (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act). Congress has until June 2024 to expand legislation and give reparations to harmed families in New Mexico. Nevada Cold War nuclear test victims have been helped since 1990.
As FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO continues on the festival circuit, check out the film’s WEBSITE . It’s the best way to keep abreast of any and all updates regarding the doc.
