This nail-biting and intimate glimpse at nuclear detonation scenarios underlines the precariousness of our political present. Featuring interviews with Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and Valerie Plame, Countdown to Zero is a cry against oblivion. 2010, 35mm, 90 minutes.
The Human Frontier: Scott Foundas on the Films of Lucy Walker
Lucy Walker, writes critic Scott Foundas, uses her documentary camera to map a majestic and sometimes treacherous landscape: the human frontier. Over two decades, she has traveled to the literal ends of the earth—from the peaks of Everest to the depths of a Brazilian landfill, Tsunami-ravaged Japan to post-Fidel Cuba—to chronicle stories of resilience and rehabilitation, and of individuals and families, even entire populations, navigating extraordinary seasons of change. And no matter how seemingly “foreign” the milieu, Walker achieves the same bracing intimacy with her subjects.
Person to Person: Lucy Walker’s Small-P Political Documentaries
“I always think of myself as a ‘small-p political’ person,” says documentarian Lucy Walker, whose films include The Crash Reel, Waste Land, and Countdown to Zero. “The things that have the most impact on me are personal stories, stories of individuals. I believe that human beings mirror one another. We look to each other to relate to one another and learn. So in my movies I try to allow the audience to experience a world they’ve never seen through people they wouldn’t otherwise meet.”
