HE: The topic of the nuclear American landscape is so broad. Can you speak about how you explored this topic before in your work.

CM:  The first anti-nuclear film I made was PSA number 11, Fallout, which was part of a series of experimental “Public Service Announcements” against the American occupation of Iraq (2005-2006). In Fallout, I reassembled footage from a 1950s government propaganda film about radiation that highlighted the dangers of radiation while at the same time very deliberately tried to quell the fear of exposure.

In 2007, at a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico, I began recording audio conversations with anti-nuclear activists working on the nuclear weapons complex. New Mexico is a very nuclear impacted state, the first Atomic bomb Trinity was detonated there, two National laboratories exist, an interim radioactive waste site, two major Air Force bases, thousands of unremediated uranium mines with radioactive tailing piles  on indigenous community land, a private uranium enrichment facility, two additional nuclear detonations a mixed waste landfill in the center of Albuquerque and more. The nuclear abolition activism is very strong in New Mexico and it was a good starting point to understand the entire complex. I filmed around Los Alamos Laboratory, White Sands National Park and in the Tularosa Basin (the area of the Trinity test)  creating an experimental 3 channel 16mm projection piece entitled White Sands with a soundscape by Stephen Vitiello.

The next film, Minot, ND (2007) co-directed by Angelika Brudniak, was a portrait of an army base town situated amongst 150 nuclear missiles on high alert (pointed at Russia.) We filmed the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Sites dotting the landscape and interviewed a wide range of people living in the community, including a missileer and his wife, teenagers, and an academic who grew up in the town,  articulating her understanding of being a target.

My most recent film on the topic is Flowers for LH (2020), a 16mm film that reflects on the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry called What Use Are Flowers? about the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. This film was made in collaboration with the dancer Joey Kipp and filmed in Brooklyn and at the Trinity Site in New Mexico.

HE: For Index:Trace, you are looking at the nuclear impact in all 50 states, which seems like a colossal undertaking.
 

 CM: Yes, truly. 
 

Index:Trace has demanded a total immersion in learning about both the commercial and military aspects of the American Nuclear Complex, across all 50 states. It is not a static complex, so for four years I have been researching, reading and having conversations with hundreds of individuals across the country that are working locally, regionally, nationally and internationally on nuclear issues. 

When I started the film in 2020, the political climate was different. Today, the promotion of nuclear weapons production and nuclear power is at the forefront of US national policy. We are eight decades into the American nuclear complex and the US is actively engaged in developing their Nuclear Complex. We are starting plutonium pit production again (the core of a nuclear weapon) at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; Nuclear Power plant proposal are being supported; Uranium mine permits are being granted;Fuel Production facilities are ramping up again; and National Waste repository sites are still being discussed.

All 50 states are marked by at least one index of the nuclear complex — Uranium, Fuel Production, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power and Radioactive Waste — but most of them are impacted by multiple sites across indices. Since 2021, I have traveled to more than 200 sites in 42 states filming nuclear impacted landscapes and recording conversations with people who are advocating for nuclear abolition, transparency, accountability and solutions to monitor and maintain the already contaminated eco-systems.

The throughline of the film will be a “teach-in” about radiation emissions  and the impacts of various radionuclides on the body and the environment addressing the very problematic State and Federal regulatory standards.

At this crucial moment in the nuclear abolition movement, I am hoping that Index:Trace will make people more aware of what is going on in their communities, their state, nationally and internationally and will motivate people to challenge the nuclear policies and practices and share in the vision of creating an ecologically sustainable future.
 

HE: You mentioned the film will be at least two hours long. Will the film be divided into segments that can be viewed separately or is it meant to be viewed as one piece?


 

CM: People can watch the film by Index, but it is best to watch the entire film in one sitting!

 
HE: How have you been able to manage all of this work, since you usually work by yourself or in a more intimate setting with a small group of people?



CM: Index:Trace is a collaborative project. I have learned from so many activists and communities across the country as well worked with many people who are assisting me on photo research, editing, research and writing, graphic design, map making, cinematographers and radiation teachers, consultants and so much more. I have a very strong cohort of people across the country that I can turn to with questions about nuclear issues past, present and future. This film would not exist without the support and participation of the diverse, intergenerational group of people from across the country who have shared their experiences, knowledge and support for making this film.

Devotion

HE: Tell me about the text-based maps that are part of this film? It was shocking to see in your 15 minute promo that all 50 states have become dumping grounds for radioactive waste.

CM: For each of the five indices of the American Nuclear Complex — Uranium, Fuel Production, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, Radioactive Waste — there will a series of maps:

States impacted by Index

Tribes impacted by Index

Bodies of waters impacted by Index

Radioactive Material Transportation Routes by Index

The majority of the Nuclear Complex production sites, across all 50 states have radioactive waste stored on the site of production. Even if the waste has been removed and transported to a designated waste storage site, the landscape is still contaminated with radionuclides. A good example of this is Rocky Flats, a former plutonium trigger making facility in Colorado, which the state turned into a National Wildlife Refuge area. There is still plutonium in the ground and although the Plutonium production buildings have been removed and the former area of the plant site is off limits to the public, there is still contamination on the land that continues to migrate into the water system of communities. 

Aside from the  waste stored at all of the production sites by index, there are also national and privately owned radioactive waste facilities in a number of states that accept different classifications of waste from the military and commercial nuclear production sites.

There is so much to say about radioactive waste, from the problematic government classifications, how it was dumped in unlined pits across the US until the 1970s at nuclear sites across the country, how it is currently stored and contained and monitored, methods of waste remediation, the impacts of the climate crisis on radioactive waste (flood zones, earthquakes, fires). Index:Trace will break the silence around radioactive waste, that will need to be safeguarded forever. People will understand that there is no such thing as clean-up and our policies for containment, transportation and management of the waste needs to be seriously addressed.  The best policy is to stop producing additional radioactive waste, that we have no viable solution for and to support nuclear abolition. 

HE: There are some sites that you can show visually, yet inherently, Index:Trace is about something that's almost invisible. How did you go about trying to capture something in a visual manner, when that something is mostly invisible?

CM: Index:Trace is trying to make the highly secretive and intentionally invisible American nuclear complex visible. I want people to experience the omnipresence of these nuclear sites in the landscape. Whether camouflaged or in plain view, these sites are often fortresses surrounded by security. All of them are incredibly dangerous.

I filmed nuclear facilities, communities near these facilities and I filmed on a 16mm animation stand an extensively researched archive of photographs of sites that I was unable to travel to.

The film will be quite inclusive, but it would be impossible to show every site. For example just on Navajo Nation land there are 1100 abandoned uranium mines.

HE: Where are you in the production process?

CM: I will start editing in September 2024 and plan to finish the film by September 2025 in time to submit to 2026 film festivals.
 

HE: I would love to talk about Istanbul with you. Many of your films portray how the US military complex has shaped both the American landscape, as well as that of many others beyond its borders. There's a scene in your film Devotion (2003), where you meet the owner of a carpenter shop who has been taking note of all US military excursions since 1945. This little snippet made me laugh out loud, not because it's funny, but more because I found it to be such a telltale sign of your work: ''Of course Cynthia meets a man in a foreign city who has a pink-lined sheet of paper listing all US military excursions in the past 50 years''. After Devotion in the early 2000s, your work focused on ''the landscape of war'' and the impacts of war. What has influenced your vision as an artist and ultimately inspired you to walk this path in the early 2000s?

CM: Devotion was made in 2002-2003 at a very pivotal moment in Turkish history in which secularism, represented in the film by images of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk, which hang in every shop and office, was being challenged by a religiously conservative government. Devotion was an outsider’s perspective on this tension in the city and the parallel nationalist movements told through a narrative about the end of a relationship. I lived in Galata during this time and a carpenter who made me a beautiful drawing table really did have this list and recited it to me!

1+8 (2012), made in collaboration with Angelika Brudniak, was filmed in 16 border towns of Turkey and her eight neighbors: Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, Nakchivan, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. This film and the eight screen installation shown at SALT Istanbul, focused on transnational relationships and Turkey’s unique geographic position between Europe, the Middle East and former countries of the Soviet Union.

I also collaborated with two contemporary dancers, Idil Kemer and Leyla Postalcıoğlu, on Tarlabașı and Kalan/What Remains, both films that reflect on issues of urban gentrification and cultural displacement.​​​​