When I started researching this topic, I bought DVDs on nuclear material, and found I had some relevant recordings anyway - some on old VHS tapes, and some on other DVDs. These are just a few notes for people who might want to follow up this approach. Subjects include testing; but also medical aspects, radiation and fall-out, atomic energy and its wonders, mass casualties, weapons manufacture, civil defense - shelters, duck-and-cover, plans for evacuation. All of these are propaganda. Many of the films are designed to correct other propaganda - for example films on radiation have inconsistent messages - there's one on Hiroshima, adamant that there are no genetic defects caused by radiation. Another is adamant that nuclear-bomb carrying planes are perfectly safe. 'Our Cities Must Fight' is a drama of a newspaper editor commissioning a piece on how nobody should just head for the hills. 'A Day Called X' was a black-and-white film, for general release, though I'd guess it was a 'B' feature. 'A Tale of Two Cities' looked at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Quite a peek into the nuclear-industrial complex.
- Birth year DVDs (from 1945 on) and newsreels of e.g. 1950s often contain Pathe style brief reports on weapons - new aircraft, rockets, and of course nuclear tests. It's usually not clear whether their cinematographers took the footage themselves, or whether it's edited from official film. There's always a voiceover, usually a harsh and unromantic male voice. And often there's a rather ridiculous music score.
- Second World War and other war films and DVDs nearly always have a section on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for obvious reasons. Some were made at the time, others later - for example, an entire Time-Life series shown on TV in the 1950s is now sold quite cheaply on DVD.
- DVDs of declassified US films have existed since (I think) the 1990s. The quality varies - I'd guess the projection equipment needed to show sprocket-holed film is itself rather antique. Each publisher seems to do its own conversion from film to digital video - so there may be slight variations between publishers. The more elaborate films are in colour, usually, by now, a bit faded and washed-out.
The best compilation I've found is a 3-DVD set, 'Atomic Testing - 37 Features' totalling about 13 hours, disk 2 being 'Atomic Testing Revealed'. The images appear to be 720 x 480 mpgs. These DVDs contain most of the genres descibed above. In addition to tests, there are civil defense films of the 'duck behind a tree' type though the information on e.g. fallout varies a bit as they tried to decide on the official story. There are supposed informational films; a couple of full-length black and white films - 'A Day Called X'; and lots more including film of B-61 bombs being made. HOWEVER I couldn't find things like Ivy-Mike or the more fantastic films - maybe they were 'sanitised'?
I specifically DON'T recommend 'America's Atomic Bomb Tests' published by Image Entertainment - 3 DVDs but not much more than 3 hours total, and only of Tumbler Snapper and Hardtack, plus some on the tests supposedly of houses.
DVDs are produced by 'The Historical Archive' which seems to be a one-man outfit. Their 2-DVD 'Atomic Weapons and Atomic Testing' set has two versions of 'Operation Cue', but is very short on H bomb tests and therefore isn't very useful. 'Stay Safe, Stay Strong' appears in its menu as 'Stay Fade, Stay Strong' which is unimpressive.
- There must be official material online from e.g. governmental and US army and archive sources. And TV sites (e.g. the BBC) must have material included in passing - they have biographies of nuclear people, dramas of e.g. Oppenheimer, interviews with supposed weapons designers.
- Note: French, Russian, Chinese, Indian and Pakistani sources must exist, and there are youtubes made from their films, usually with no indication of where they were extracted from. I haven't much information on these.
