1982 / US / 86 mins / Dir: Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, Pierce Raffert
Cast:Paul Tibbets, Harry S. Truman, W.H.P. Blandy

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s American government issued propaganda films designed to reassure the public that the Atomic Bomb was not a threat to their safety.

The Atomic Cafe is a black comedy about the harrowing misinformation surrounding the U.S. government’s acquisition, development and testing of both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. The film is an “artfully assembled collage of official insanity”, as one critic put it at the time, pulled from an extensive archive of propaganda films originally made to pacify the American public by demystifying the effects of nuclear fallout. It was Pierce Rafferty who stumbled upon the catalogue of 3433 U.S. government films in a San Francisco bookstore – as early as 1976 – and then came up with the idea to make a film about these propaganda films.

By piecing together all these archive materials the filmmakers take us on a journey so outrageous and hilarious that it could only have been made possible through propaganda.

Nominated for Flaherty Documentary Award at the BAFTAs for Best Documentary

‘A stunner, a movie that has one howling with laughter, horror and disbelief.’ The New York Times