Virtual screenings & discussion of 33 Days of Utopia (Germany) & The Beekeeper (UK)

Virtual screenings & discussion of two documentaries exploring resistance to nuclear power: 33 Days of Utopia (Germany) & The Beekeeper (UK)

Join the filmmakers and anti-nuclear activists for a live virtual discussion on Tuesday, March 30, 2021 at 1:00 PM (EST).

Join the event: Please register through Eventbrite here, and follow instructions. All those who RSVP for the event will receive a private link to view both films.

The Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Washington, DC in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Washington, DC, and Beyond Nuclear will present four events during 2021, in a year that marks 10 years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and 35 years since the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The event series Standing Up to Nuclear Power Through Protest and the Arts will showcase different examples of both mass protest and deeply personal resistance. Jointly, we will explore how the performing and visual arts, including film, music, theatre, fashion and painting — along with protest and resistance — can make a powerful statement of opposition to nuclear power and propel action against climate change.

The opening event —Defiance on Film— features the directors and protagonists from two new documentary films: 33 Days of Utopia (2020, Germany) and The Beekeeper (2020, United Kingdom).

The German documentary, 33 Days of Utopia, literally digs up history, as an archeologist unearths artifacts that were part of a 1980 encampment of 800 people who created their own “utopia” as they protested a proposed nuclear waste dump at Gorleben. Theirs is a story of mass solidarity and of community, of mutual support and affinity.

Trailer in German - Film will have English subtitles. 84 min.

The Beekeeper features Katie Hayward, a beekeeper in North Wales, who stood almost alone in her fight not make way for the bulldozers that would destroy her farm in preparation for a new two-reactor nuclear site at Wylfa-B on the island of Anglesey. Rejected by her neighbors who sold out to the nuclear company, Horizon (Hitachi), Hayward spirals in and out of depression and near suicide as she navigates her one-woman battle to save her bees, her farm animals, and the ancestral land she loves.

Trailer in English - Film will be in English. 12 min.

The March 30 event will feature 33 Days of Utopia director, Roswitha Ziegler; Rebecca Harms, who participated in the Gorleben encampment and went on to become a Green Party Member of the European Parliament; Attila Dészi, archaeologist at the University of Hamburg; Anglesey beekeeper, Katie Hayward; and Will McGregor, director of The Beekeeper. The round table discussion will be moderated by Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter, followed by questions from the audience.