Series Zero-Sum: Lovejoy’s Nuclear War (1975)plus films by Conner, Lerner, and Doyle, Dane & Bembach

Lovejoy’s Nuclear War (1975) Directed by Dan Keller.

With Sam Lovejoy, John Gofman, William Semanie, Anna Gyorgy, Charles Bragg, Howard Zinn, Betty Bell, Stanley Bell, James O’Neil.

This film documents the earliest major act of civil disobedience against atomic power – farmer Sam Lovejoy’s fight against the proposed building of a Massachusetts nuclear power plant in the small, depressed town of Montague, Massachusetts in 1974. It presents a cross-section of views about nuclear power, civil disobedience and the politics of energy that were drawn together by Lovejoy’s sabotage and the trial that followed it. Preceded by Bruce Conner’s found footage masterpiece A Movie (1958), Phil Lerner’s My Own Yard to Play In (1959), showing how the vivid imagination and inventiveness of children transform the urban New York City landscape into an endless playground and featuring a sound track by the ‘King of Sound’ Tony Schwartz and Daisy, the controversial ad made for Lyndon Johnson’s re-election campaign of 1964.

The program:

A Movie (1958) by Bruce Conner  12 min.
My Own Yard to Play In (1959) by Phil Lerner  7 min.
Daisy (1964) by Doyle, Dane & Bernbach  30 seconds
Lovejoy’s Nuclear War (1975) by Dan Keller 68 min.

All films 16mm, b/w or color, sound.

Films courtesy  The Orgone Archive and the Carnegie Museum of Art.