|
Sometimes, histiography is easy. Just imagine: a desert in splendid black and white, a howling wind and then a stream of water. A man takes a woman in his arms and says: "I am going to build a ranch for you here". Off screen, a woman's voice expands on this historical picture of a western from the forties. More people came, a city grew up, the Paiute and Shoshone were bundled off to a barren reservation, the cotton fields flourished thanks to the irrigation canals and, in the fifties, nuclear test devices merrily exploded. Tourists traveled to Las Vegas to gamble, to marry, to divorce and to admire the mushroom shaped clouds. Nobody noticed the grey dust above this 'pool of doom'; in Doomtown, people brewed coffee in the radioactive ash. In 1880, Wovoka predicted that the Paiute would once again rule the green prairies, but the dream ended in the 'ghost dance' at Wounded Knee. In 1996, we know that thousands of soldiers and workers were wilfully exposed to nuclear fall-out in those days, in the same way that we know that within the near future, shortly after the year 2000, Las Vegas will have totally exhausted its water supplies. But what does it matter? John Ford and John Wayne are already dead from cancer. We will commemorate the dead heroes.
–
Erik Daams
|
Camera, Editing Cordelia Swann, Marek Budzynski, Sound Stuart Jones, Sound mixer Carl Gardiner, Voice Suzanne Park, Research Jo Comino, Production Marek Budzynski, Cordelia Swann
|
|
1 9 9 6 
