“URANIUM DRIVE-IN” PREMIERES AT MOUNTAIN FILM

22 May “URANIUM DRIVE-IN” PREMIERES AT MOUNTAIN FILM

Key players on “Uranium Drive-In” team: Ben Knight, Suzan Beraza and Casey Ney on location at Nucla elementary school.

Telluride talent Suzan Beraza has never let any grass grow under her feet. She is the real thing – rather the Reel Thing (the name of her film production company) – known to walk her talk.

Once a diva on the local stage  – in the early 1990s, she co-founded the Telluride Repertory Theatre, which merged with Squid Show to form the now thriving Telluride Theatre – Suzan switched gears and is now an actor on the world stage, playing to much larger audiences through the medium of film.

Suzan Beraza’s first feature-length documentary, “Bag It,” an exposé on single-use disposable plastic, premiered at Mountainfilm in Telluride in 2010 and won the Audience Award, the first of many honors garnered at festivals large and small. PBS eventually picked up the doc and it continues to show on TV, at schools, and all over the globe.

“Bag It” is funny, intelligent, grippingly intense – and life changing; in other words, polemical and proud of it. Suzan’s second feature-length documentary is not. In “Uranium Drive-In,” the director took a whole different tack: she decided to let the camera roll and we, the audience, decide. “Uranium Drive-In” offers no easy answers, but aims instead to capture personal stories and paint a portrait of the lives behind a nuanced and complex issue.

The world premiere of “Uranium Drive-In” takes place at Mountainfilm in Telluride, Saturday, May 25, 6:15 p.m. Its second screening is Sunday, May 26, 12:15 p.m. Both shows are at the Michael D. Palm Theatre and will be followed by a panel discussion that includes the director.

“Uranium Drive-In” is a haunting story of a hardscrabble community in southwestern Colorado that’s been brought to its knees. Could a proposed uranium mill — the first to be built in the U.S. in 30 years — turn things around? The emotional debate that ensues pits a population desperate for jobs and financial stability against opposition from an environmental group based in a nearby resort town. (Guess who.)

The controversy over the uranium mill in the Paradox Valley spilled outside the Colorado borders. The national media, including the New Yorker Magazine and the New York Times, covered the story because the lives of the community members and the role of industry and “outsiders” parallel resource extraction stories across the globe.

Naturita mayor Tami Lawrence considers restoring old Uranium Drive-In sign.

According to Mountainfilm Festival Director, David Holbrooke, across the board, this year’s selection of films “encompasses a lot of what is happening right now around the world.” The Festival received close to 500 submissions, of which only 18 feature-length films were accepted, “Uranium Drive-In” among them. Mountainfilm is expected to draw an audience of more than 4,000.

Suzan’s Reel Thing is a Telluride-based production company dedicated to documentary film, entertainment, education, and outreach.

Mountainfilm in Telluride is of America’s longest-running film festivals, a four-day gathering of the tribe featuring film, fine art, and lively discussion. Since 1979, the event has attracted filmmakers, photographers, conservationists, mountaineers, scientists, and explorers from all over the world.

To learn more, click the “play” button and listen to my chat with Suzan Beraza.

And go here to view the trailer.