Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age is a 1985 Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Dennis O'Rourke

Dennis O'Rourke

Dennis O'Rourke is an Australian documentary filmmaker.- Biography :For most of his childhood, Dennis O'Rourke lived in a small country town, where his parents ran a failing business, until he was sent to a Catholic boarding school for his secondary education...

, concerning the American Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle. Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States ,...

 nuclear testing at the Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands

The Republic of the Marshall Islands , , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. As of July 2011 the population was 67,182...

 in 1954.

The film features interviews with residents of the nearby Rongelap

Rongelap Atoll

Rongelap Atoll or Namorik Atoll is a coral atoll of 61 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is only , but it encloses a lagoon with an area of...

 and Utirik Atoll

Utirik Atoll

Utirik Atoll or Utrik Atoll is a coral atoll of 10 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is only , but it encloses a lagoon with an area of...

s who were affected by nuclear fallout

Nuclear fallout

Fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes...

from the tests. Unlike in previous nuclear tests and despite the considerably more powerful nuclear explosion involved, these residents were not relocated to a safer location. Declassified American military footage is included in the production.

External links

• Half Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age at the Australian screen