Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power (2014)

Director
Michael Packer

Main cast
Joan Allen; Michael Stewart Allen; Joel Briel; James Cronin; Jonathan Fielding

Genres
Documentary, TV Movie

Description
Dive into the life of the father of the nuclear Navy: Hyman Rickover. Combative, provocative, and blunt, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was a flamboyant maverick and a unique American hero. When few thought it possible, then-Captain Rickover harnessed the power of the atom to drive the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, whose trip under the polar ice pack was one of the great adventure stories of the 1950s. Later, Rickover built the world's first nuclear aircraft carrier and the first commercial nuclear power plant at Shippingport, PA. Rickover's achievements made him into a national celebrity, and he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Many wonder whether America can maintain its technological pre-eminence and whether we can still build and manage large-scale projects. To understand these issues, Rickover considers the story of the man who created the nuclear Navy as well as the civilian nuclear power industry: Hyman G. Rickover.


Similar movies

The War Game is a fictional, worst-case-scenario docudrama about nuclear war and its aftermath in and around a typical English city. Although it won an Oscar for Best Documentary, it is fiction. It was intended as an hour-long program to air on BBC 1, but it was deemed too intense and violent to broadcast. It went to theatrical distribution as a feature film instead. Low-budget and shot on location, it strives for and achieves convincing and unflinching realism.
The atomic bomb, the specter of a global nuclear holocaust, and disasters like Fukushima have made nuclear energy synonymous with the darkest nightmares of the modern world. But what if everyone has nuclear power wrong? What if people knew that there are reactors that are self-sustaining and fully controllable and ones that require no waste disposal? What if nuclear power is the only energy source that has the ability to stop climate change?
"Trinity and Beyond" is an unsettling yet visually fascinating documentary presenting the history of nuclear weapons development and testing between 1945-1963. Narrated by William Shatner and featuring an original score performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, this award-winning documentary reveals previously unreleased and classified government footage from several countries.
Award-winning musician Björk and legendary broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough have admired each other's work for years but this is the first time they have discussed their mutual love of music and the natural world on screen. In this remarkable documentary, Björk explores our unique relationship with music and discovers how technology might transform the way we engage with it in the future.
Academy Award®–winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
Pumping Iron is a 1977 documentary film about the run-up to the 1975 Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition. The film focuses on Arnold Schwarzenegger and his competitors, Lou Ferrigno and Franco Columbu. The documentary was co-directed by Robert Fiore and George Butler. It was based on the book of the same name by Charles Gaines and George Butler (Simon and Schuster, 1974).
Generation Iron - examines the professional sport of bodybuilding today and gives the audience front row access to the lives of the top 7 bodybuilders in the sport as they train to compete in the world's most premiere bodybuilding stage - Mr. Olympia.
A look at the first years of Pixar Animation Studios - from the success of "Toy Story" and Pixar's promotion of talented people.
A historian, Tom Holland, looks at the origins of Islam and questions it's history and authenticity.
A look at the global culture and appeal of the LEGO building-block toys.
A documentary that weaves together the stories of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of one of the most prominent and influential families in American politics.
The love story between British writer, Christopher Isherwood (whose book 'The Berlin Stories' inspired the musical and film Cabaret) and Don Bachardy, American portrait artist.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.
"Go Further" explores the idea that the single individual is the key to large-scale transformational change. The film follows actor Woody Harrelson as he takes a small group of friends on a bio-fueled bus-ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. Their goal? To show the people they encounter that there are viable alternatives.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were effected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
A documentary series on life in and adapted to the conditions of the Southern part of the Pacific Ocean, a vast aquatic region with an unequaled number of islands. Both wildlife and human cultures developed in a unique variety, largely determined by such natural conditions as huge distances, sea depths, currents and winds.
Fed Up blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and weight loss, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.
Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, EARTHLINGS chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit.
Each year, 60,000 people from around the globe gather in a dusty windswept Nevada desert to build a temporary city, collaborating on large-scale art and partying for a week before burning a giant effigy in a ritual frenzy. Spark takes us behind the curtain with Burning Man organizers and participants, revealing a year of unprecedented challenges and growth.
The Golden Temple - Olympic Regeneration of East London.
Documentary charting the progress of scientists throughout history who attempted to harness the ultimate limit of cold, known as absolute zero 2 parts; The Conquest of Cold & Race for Absolute Zero
Chai Jing's documentary about the massive smog problem in China.
Bombay Beach is one of the poorest communities in southern California located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea stranded in the middle of the Colorado desert that was once a beautiful vacation destination for the privileged and is now a pool of dead fish. Film director Alma Har'el tells the story of three protagonists. The trials of Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. The story of CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles; and that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life. Together these portraits form a triptych of manhood in its various ages and guises...
Inspired by films including "Rattle and Hum" and "Endless Summer," Fading West follows Grammy-winning alternative-rock band Switchfoot as they travel the globe in search of new musical inspiration and perfect waves. Filmed during Switchfoot's 2012 World Tour, Fading West charts the creation of the fivesome's upcoming album in its earliest and most unpredictable stages. As the band visits legendary surf breaks in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Bali, brothers Jon and Tim Foreman breathe fresh life into their songs by harnessing the spirit of their surroundings and mining new emotional depths. Part rock documentary, surf film, and travelogue, Fading West offers rare glimpses of the longtime surfers on their boards, captures the frenetic energy of their live shows, and portrays a journey both epic and intimate.
A history of mankind's interactions with Niagara Falls, from initial awe, to harnessing of the Falls' power, which leads to the destruction of nearby areas like Love Canal.
Openly gay pro wrestler, Simon Sermon, defies flamboyant gay stereotypes in professional wrestling and talks about his career in this no-questions-barred documentary. Featuring an interview with the legendary flamboyant pro wrestler, Exotic Adrian Street.
America is the home to one million Gypsies, or Rom, whose rich culture has long been mysterious to outsiders. A flamboyant Romany leader invites us into his world when it comes under threat. In a quest to defend his honor, he leads us through the history of his people to Civil Rights courts, Vegas casinos and beyond...
In the ultimate clash of the titans, the giants of prehistory engage in mortal combat. The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs harnesses new research and new ways of seeing how the most ferocious dinosaurs really lived, and died.
Street pimps, all of them African-American, discuss their lives and work: getting started, being flamboyant, pimping in various U.S. cities, bringing a woman into their group, taking a woman from another pimp, and the rules and regulations of pimping. The men are clear: it's about money.
Walt Disney was uniquely adept at art as well as commerce, a master filmmaker who harnessed the power of technology and storytelling. This new film examines Disney's complex life and enduring legacy. Features rare archival footage from the Disney vaults, scenes from some of his greatest films, interviews with biographers and animators, and the designers who helped turn his dream of Disneyland into reality.
A six-night miniseries presenting the history of how the United States was invented, looking at the moments where Americans harnessed technology to advance human progress -- from the rigors of linking the continent by transcontinental railroad to triumphing over vertical space through the construction of steel-structured buildings. The series also is a story of conflict, with Native American peoples, slavery, the Revolutionary War that birthed the nation, the Civil War that divided it, and the great world war that shaped its future.
A revealing look at the outspoken, flamboyant founder of the Playboy empire. With humor and insight, the film captures Hefner's fierce battles with the government, the religious right and militant feminists. Rare footage and compelling interviews with a remarkable who's who of 20th Century American pop culture, present a brilliant and entertaining snapshot of the life of an extraordinary man and the controversies that surrounded him.
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
The compelling feature-length documentary film, by director Barry Ptolemy, chronicles the life and controversial ideas of luminary Ray Kurzweil. For more than three decades, inventor, futures, and New York Times best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future.
Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.
William Shatner presents a light-hearted look at how the "Star Trek" TV series have influenced and inspired today's technologies, including: cell phones, medical imaging, computers and software, SETI, MP3 players and iPods, virtual reality, and spaceship propulsion.
Klein goes on the hunt for Little Richard, the legendary ‘Architect of Rock and Roll’, who quit show business in 1957 at the height of his fame to become an evangelist. Richard was then lured back to secular music in the 1960s and 70s, but the excesses of stardom led him to a second retreat from the stage. For years he struggled to reconcile his religious calling with his flamboyant rock-and-roll persona, and at the time of filming, Klein finds Little Richard selling ‘Black Heritage Bibles’ for a Nashville couple. Sensing that his image is being exploited, Richard quits his sales position and deserts the film. But Klein turns this into an opportunity to reconstruct Richard’s personality through the words of his family and friends in his native Macon, Georgia, and to celebrate his status as a cultural icon by filming scores of Little Richard impersonators and adoring fans in Hollywood.
For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
Tiffany Shlain's documentary, Connected, explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our time-the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy-while searching for her place in the world during a transformative time in her life. Employing a combination of animation and archival footage, Shlain constructs a chronological tour of Western modernization through the work of her late father, Leonard Shlain, a surgeon and best-selling author. Connected illuminates the beauty and tragedy of human endeavor while championing the importance of personal connectedness for understanding and coping with today's global conditions.
A photographic journey compiled from journals, archival footage and photographs of an Australian military photographer, Sir Hubert Wilkins in 1931 as he went from New York to the North Pole in an old WWI submarine to explore the Arctic Ocean. Included on dvd are a brief history of the submarine and photographic gallery of Wilkins.
While most sports films celebrate the quest for a championship, "Quantum Hoops" follows a team that is searching for a single win. The documentary chronicles the final week of the 2006 Caltech basketball season. The team is currently in the midst of a 21 year losing streak - over 240 consecutive conference losses. Caltech is annually considered one of the top 5 academic institutions in the world yet its athletic department always takes a back seat to the achievements of its world renowned faculty, Nobel prize winners, and advancements in the world of science and technology.
Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances.
Are we prepared for dealing with the prospect that humanity is not the end of evolution? Technocalyps is an intriguing three-part documentary on the notion of transhumanism by Belgian visual artist and filmmaker Frank Theys. The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media every day, but with no analysis of their common aim: that of exceeding human limitations. The director conducts his enquiry into the scientific, ethical and metaphysical dimensions of technological development.
Ep1 - Africa Africa is the cradle of humanity, it is land born from violent, cataclysmic events. Ep2 - Eurasia Europe and Asia; geologically they are part of the same vast landmass, Eurasia. Shaped by a series of collisions, mountain ranges have been pushed up, valleys created and a once great ocean has come and gone. Ep3 - The Americas From the bedrock the Empire State Building is built on, to the Spanish empires in South America, the two land masses of North and South America are linked by geology and history. Ep4 - Australia Australia was once part of a super-continent and its deserts were covered in forests. Once joined to Antarctica, it split off and moved northwards into warmer climes, whilst Antarctica became an icy wasteland.
The onset of the 21st Century will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
Deep Web gives the inside story of one of the the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century -- the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the convicted 30-year-old entrepreneur accused to be 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road. The film explores how the brightest minds and thought leaders behind the Deep Web are now caught in the crosshairs of the battle for control of a future inextricably linked to technology, with our digital rights hanging in the balance.
The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? feature film documents the process of development of the ill fated "Superman Lives" movie, that was to be directed by Tim Burton and star Nicolas Cage as the man of steel himself, Superman. The project went through years of development before the plug was pulled, and this documentary interviews the major players: Kevin Smith, Tim Burton, Jon Peters, Dan Gilroy, Colleen Atwood, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and many many more.
Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco is a compelling exploration of the legendary filmmakers who call the San Francisco Bay Area home including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Chris Columbus and producer Saul Zaentz. The special weaves interviews, commentaries and unforgettable moments from some of the most visionary movies ever created such as American Graffiti, the Star Wars film series, the Indiana Jones film series, The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Lost in Translation, Flags of Our Fathers and many others. It also features interviews with those who have worked with Bay Area mavericks: Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Anthony Minghella, Milos Forman and Frank Darabont.
Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival
"The Principle" brings to light astonishing new scientific observations challenging the Copernican Principle; the foundational assumption underlying the modern scientific world view. The idea that the Earth occupies no special or favored position in the cosmos has launched the last two scientific revolutions - the Copernican Revolution and Relativity - and, as Lawrence Krauss has said, we could be on the verge of a third, with "Copernicus coming back to haunt us". Interviews with leading cosmologists are interspersed with the views of dissidents and mavericks, bringing into sharp focus the challenges and implications not only for cosmology, but for our cultural and religious view of reality.
Take a trip back to a time when New York City wasn't all glitz and glamour as filmmaker Celine Danhier offers a look at the birth of "No Wave Cinema" and the vibrant art scene that exploded out of the East Village in the late '70s. In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Garbage Warrior is a feature-length documentary film telling the epic story of maverick US architect Michael Reynolds and his fight to introduce radically sustainable housing. An extraordinary tale of triumph over bureaucracy, Garbage Warrior is above all an intimate portrait of an extraordinary individual and his dream of changing the world. Written by The Works International
Internationally acclaimed ventriloquist Nina Conti, takes the bereaved puppets of her mentor and erstwhile lover Ken Campbell on a pilgrimage to 'Venthaven' the resting place for puppets of dead ventriloquists. She gets to know her latex and wooden travelling partners along the way, and with them deconstructs herself and her lost love in this ventriloquial docu-mocumentary requiem. Ken Campbell was a hugely respected maverick of the British Theatre, an eccentric genius who would snort out forgotten artforms. Nina was his prodigy in ventriloquism and has been said to have reinvented the artform. This film is truly unique in genre and style. No one has seen ventriloquism like this before.
The documentary recounts the world's first nuclear attack and examines the alarming repercussions. Covering a three-week period from the Trinity test to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the program chronicles America's political gamble and the planning for the momentous event. Archival film, dramatizations, and special effects feature what occurred aboard the Enola Gay (the aircraft that dropped the bomb) and inside the exploding bomb.
This unconventional documentary follows the struggles of five infamous graffiti artists as they make the transition from the street to the world of commercial success. Applying spray paint to some of the unlikeliest of places and materials -- including metallic city rooftops, sandy deserts, smelly sewers and wood-filled forests -- these maverick artists can't help but reveal their true, defiant colors, despite their professional ambitions.
You've heard of Hollywood, a town of tinsel and glamour, the town of Paramount, Columbia and MGM. But there is another Hollywood, a place where maverick independent EXPLOITATION FILMMAKERS went toe to toe with the big guys and came out on top!
Controversial anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens lays bare the intricacy and beauty of the human design and lifts the lid on the mysteries of our own bodies. At the heart of each programme is a human dissection, carried out by controversial anatomist Dr. Guther von Hagens, and commentary by pathologist Professor John A. Lee. Movement - Demonstration of muscles, skin, tendons, bone and the nervous sy
Steven Okazaki presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of thermonuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.
Dr. Heinz Haber, a noted scientist in the field of atomic energy, hosts this look at the possibility of an exciting new power source. He starts by comparing atomic energy to a genie in a bottle, both of which capable of doing both good and evil, and it is up to humankind to develop safe controls over this largely unexplored science.

© Valossa 2015–2024