GOLDEN, Colo. — Golden will roll out the “green carpet” for the 19th Colorado Environmental Film Festival. This year’s festival features 60 full length and short films from 17 different countries. Nine of the films are from Colorado.
One of the films — "Half-life of Memory: America’s Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory" — delves into the history of Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant which closed in 1992. The area underwent a lengthy cleanup and today is a wildlife refuge. The film's director Jeff Gipe said because of that, he feels some of its history has been forgotten.
“The Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant produced 70,000 atomic weapons, essentially in secret. and through that, there was many accidents and releases of radioactive contamination in the denver metro area,” Gipe said.
He grew up in Arvada and his father worked at Rocky Flats. Gipe said the film also shows how the plant became a center of the nuclear activism movement.
CEFF Director Nicole Bickford said this year’s films cover a range of topics outside of Colorado as well, from the Snake River in the Pacific Northwest, to coral reefs. The weekend is geared toward inspiring activism.
Hear how she says the festival hopes to do that, in the video player below:
“We want people to go out and engage in our expo, where they can meet up with environmental organizations that are actually doing the work in our community here,” Bickford said.
The festival runs Friday through Sunday on the Colorado School of Mines campus. Sunday morning, all the films are free and there will be an opportunity to stream the films online as well.
Denver7 is committed to making a difference in our community by standing up for what's right, listening, lending a helping hand and following through on promises. See that work in action, in the videos above.