Like many things originally thought beneficial, radium proved deadly. In the 1920s, hundreds of young women working in factories were exposed to so much of the chemical element that their gravesites can still set off Geiger counters.
“City Lights” host Lois Reitzes spoke with Atlanta native, filmmaker and director Lydia Dean Pilcher about her new film, “Radium Girls.” It focuses on the story of two sisters, Bessie (played by Joey King) and Jo Cavallo (played by Abby Quinn), who work at the American Radium Factory. The factory manufactured glow-in-the-dark watch dials that used radium to make them luminous.
The women would dip their brushes into radium, lick the tip of the brushes to give them a precise point, and paint the numbers onto the dial. That direct contact and exposure led to many women dying from radium poisoning.
FILM CLIPS
Here s what s playing DEC. 14-17 at area movie theaters and streaming on the virtual screens offered by non-profit, year-round, independent cinemas in the Berkshires and environs. Where films have been reviewed, the capsules include the name of film critic and the day the full review was posted on berkshireeagle.com. All reviews are by Associated Press critics.
76 DAYS
On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis, this documentary tells indelible human stories at the center of this pandemicâfrom a woman begging in vain to bid a final farewell to her father, a grandpa with dementia searching for his way home, a couple anxious to meet their newborn, to a nurse determined to return personal items to families of the deceased. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience
FILM CLIPS
Here s what s playing DEC. 14-17 at area movie theaters and streaming on the virtual screens offered by non-profit, year-round, independent cinemas in the Berkshires and environs. Where films have been reviewed, the capsules include the name of film critic and the day the full review was posted on berkshireeagle.com. All reviews are by Associated Press critics.
76 DAYS
On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis, this documentary tells indelible human stories at the center of this pandemicâfrom a woman begging in vain to bid a final farewell to her father, a grandpa with dementia searching for his way home, a couple anxious to meet their newborn, to a nurse determined to return personal items to families of the deceased. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience