Film Screening and Conversation: The Atomic Cafe

This film screening and discussion will explore how 1950s American media managed public fear and promoted ideological conformity during the atomic age. The program begins with a screening of The Atomic Cafe, a 1982 documentary compiled entirely from archival footage that demonstrates how U.S. government propaganda, newsreels, military training films, and television broadcasts manufactured a sense of security around the realities of atomic warfare rather than offering genuine reassurance. Duck and Cover (1951), a short educational film produced by the Civil Defense Department, will also be shown. This second film features the animated character Bert the Turtle teaching schoolchildren the supposed ease of surviving an atomic attack through cheerful songs and simple instructions to “duck and cover.”

Following the screening, there will be a conversation between The Atomic Cafe directors Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty.

This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibition The Way We Never Were: The American Professional Photographers Collection.

Speakers:
Jayne Loader, Director
Pierce Rafferty, Director
Madison Brown (moderator), Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow, National Museum of American History, and former John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums