Geiger Sweet, Geiger Sour: Tales From The Radiation Age

 

Documentary about 100 years of radiation – from the first X-rays via Chernobyl to the present.

The innocence of X-rays didn’t last long, but for that untroubled time radiation was a magic cure-all used to remove unwanted hair (which it did, along with great clumps of the wanted kind), to fit children’s shoes, even to energise enfeebled virility by means of radioactive jock-straps.

After the Manhatten Project and the Atom Bomb, wield a lie detector around the subject and that erratic tick soon becomes a constant screech, triggered by the political evasions, and the fingers-crossed predictions of risk.

“One wouldn’t be responsible if one didn’t know,” says a scientist, uncomfortably responding to the accusation that terminally ill patients had been given experimental plutonium injections.

 

 

A Film by PAUL YULE