"Trespassing" - a film about nuclear-waste storage

Saturday, November 5, 5:45 pm, at the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th Street (at Valencia) in San Francisco.

The Sierra Club Bay Chapter is co-sponsoring with the 21st Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema a showing of "Trespassing" by Carlos De Menezes. Nine years in the making, the film unpacks a deadly political and ethical controversy around Native Americans' land rights, uranium mining, nuclear testing, and the disposal of nuclear waste. The film poetically examines the battle around nuclear-waste storage in the U.S. The movie was filmed in and around Native American sacred sites in Nevada's Yucca Mountain and Four Corners area and in California's Mojave Desert. "Trespassing" captures the breathtaking beauty of the natural environment, while documenting the actions of indigenous people and others as they risk relocation, eviction, and arrest to prevent further desecration of these lands, the air, and the water by nuclear waste.

In revisiting the consequences of U.S. nuclear policy, "Trespassing" reveals a common thread in the lives of its protagonists, demonstrating how the actions of the past resonate in the present. The film introduces a range of perspectives, including Stewart L. Udall (former secretary of interior under Kennedy and Johnson), Corbin Harney (Western Shoshone spiritual leader), Steve Lopez (Fort Mojave Indian and coordinator for the Native Nations Alliance), Anthony Guarisco (director, Alliance of Atomic Veterans), and Dorothy Purley (Laguna Indian and former uranium miner). Each story adds a layer of humanity to this evocative meditation on the ability of a culture to bring itself to the brink of annihilation while simultaneously producing "gatekeepers" to combat that annihilation.

"Trespassing" offers an in-depth and provocative examination of historical survival and struggle designed to impact the present generation and alter a deadly course of action.

The filmmakers and Native Americans featured in the film will be present for a post-film question-and-answer session.

Tickets are $10/general, $8/Film Arts members. For more information on the Festival, or to purchase tickets, call (415)552-FILM, or visit filmarts.org

You can also purchase tickets by phone at (800) 838-3006, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.