Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia

2016 • Directed by

Elias Parvulesco

Documentary

An audiovisual study on the utopian territory of the Ukrainian nuclear cities. The film is made of TV and film chronicles of 1970-86, filmed in six Ukrainian nuclear cities. The construction of nuclear cities, the nuclear power plants satellite towns, has started in the USSR in 1950s, in Ukraine in 1970s. The building of these new type cities was accompanied by the hype of the 'eternal' kind of power conquest and recreation of the utopian Lenin's images. The nuclear cities embodied the leading ideological, city planning, ecological, and scientific ambitions. In 1970-80, when the Soviet state was going through the social and ideological crisis, the nuclear cities were the reservations of the Soviet utopia. This is a film about overcoming the contradictions of the final USSR years, based on the image of a utopian nuclear city.