BBC Documentaries

Blowing up Paradise (2005x2)

Air date: Mar 16, 2005

Ben Lewis (The King of Communism, Art Safari), traces the strange history of French atomic tests in the South Pacific from the 1960s to the 90s - a story of liberty, equality and radioactivity. Thousands of Polynesian islanders were transformed from fishermen into nuclear technicians and Greenpeace activists sailed a tiny yacht into the test zone to end atmospheric testing. The film also shows how a tiny group of Tahitian radicals set up the world's only anti-nuclear resistance cell and how some former test workers from France and Tahiti now suffer from cancers that many believe are linked to fall-out from the tests.