Wackersdorf

Slought is pleased to announce a special screening of "Wackersdorf" (2018), a true story of a Bavarian community taking a stand against injustice and corruption, and a local-level politician taking on a much stronger governing power, on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 from 7-9pm. Following the film program, director Oliver Haffner and scholars Rahul Mukherjee and Simon Richter will engage in conversation, followed by public Q&A. This program is presented with the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, in partnership with the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and Penn Cinema and Media Studies.

The film, a slow-paced political thriller inspired by true events, explores the economic situation in the town of Wackersdorf, Bavaria in the early 1980s, which has been hit hard by the industrial crisis. As district administrator Hans Schuierer's re-election is in danger, a message from the Bavarian State Government is welcome news: the plan is to build a nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf that will create many new jobs. Initially unaware of the potential irreversible damage associated with a nuclear reprocessing plant that the ministry hopes will be a region-saving project, Schuierer is confident that the economic future of his district is secure. Schuierer soon becomes suspicious, and supported by activists and the local priest, Schuierer becomes an outspoken opponent of the planned construction and a figurehead of the protest movement. Defying disciplinary proceedings from the Bavarian state government, he also shows the power of a small group of activists that grew into an organized movement.

In our era of changing climate, how can we facilitate candid conversations around energy transition and industry influence in politics? How can we embrace rapid decarbonization, which we know must happen to avert global warming's worst effects? Attention to legacies of citizen action and civil disobedience is crucial, as well as caution surrounding the risks posed by purely technical solutions. From the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in March 1979, to the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in April 1986, to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster following a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, it is critical that we keep histories of nuclear disaster present in our conversations around cultural and economic transformation.