Photos & Clips: To Use A Mountain
The award-winning documentary ‘To Use A Mountain’ will open theatrically this week on Friday, August 21 in New York (DCTV Firehouse) with a theatrical expansion and a nationwide TVOD release to follow in the US/ Canada. The film examines issues of nuclear waste, nuclear weapons production, and next generation nuclear projects initiated in response to the energy demands of the AI data center boom.
Background:
In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever.
Faced with a mandate to isolate the waste for 10,000 years, the Department of Energy mapped, analyzed, and assembled its assessments, while the unsuspecting stewards of sacrificial territory found themselves fighting for their homes, health, history and dignity.
In the end, one site was chosen: a desert ridge in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, on the unceded lands of the Western Shoshone. After decades of controversy, construction at Yucca Mountain was halted, and to this day, no permanent solution has been devised for America’s 90,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.
Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, TO USE A MOUNTAIN assembles a people’s history of resistance and stewardship through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites. Farmers, miners, citizen scientists, Native American leaders, and activists—each with a story bound to this enduring threat—stand in stark contrast to the cold, silent machinery of bureaucracy, in a meditation on resistance, memory, and the timeless struggle between power and place.
TO USE A MOUNTAIN
A film by: Casey Carter
Produced by: Colleen Cassingham, Jonna McKone
Executive Producers: Brett Story, Maida Lynn, Ryan Krivoshey
TO USE A MOUNTAIN will open theatrically at DCTV in New York on Friday, August 21 with a regional theatrical expansion to follow. VOD release (via Grasshopper Film) will occur in 2027.
