Willamette Week
“Atomic Bamboozle” Probes False Hopes for the Future of Nuclear Power
Portland documentarian returns with another powerful and provocative film.
Oregon Artswatch
Prolific documentarian Jan Haaken debuts her new film
Haaken’s latest is an uncompromising piece of activism that’s well-crafted and urgent.
"Jan Haaken is one of feminist critical psychology’s most powerful voices. Here again, as in all her books and films, we discover that Haaken, a consummate story-teller, is also a consummate listener. The stories she tells here, drawn from her documentary film work and her clinical experience, reveal over and over the complexities of what it means to suffer and what it means to be human—complexities that defy any simple diagnosis. Haaken’s capacity to hear in these stories what has too often been unheard illuminates for clinicians, activists, and social theorists alike the regressive and progressive socio-political uses-- over its long history--of the PTSD diagnosis."
Lynne Layton, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology
Dept. of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
"This is a remarkable book by a remarkable author: psychoanalytic therapist, professor, scholar, and documentary filmmaker embedded in a Combat Stress Control unit in Afghanistan. No other book brings this wide-ranging and up-close access to the politics and experience of PTSD. No other book combines scholarship with experience in this way. A remarkable achievement."
Fred Alford, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus,
University of Maryland, College Park
It’s notoriously hard to make films about climate change that are pleasurable to watch. The NECESSITY filmmakers have done just that. Their two-part series captures the awe-inspiring beauty of threatened lands and waterways and the creativity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people putting their bodies on the line in saying "No to Oil." . Each of the documentaries is structured around a group of climate activists using the necessity defense in a jury trial. But we see how the success of this legal strategy depends on many lines of solidarity outside the courtrooms, from Indigenous water protectors and white allies, urban activists and small-town dwellers, environmentalists and union leaders, to different generations of people joining arms in a common fight to stop the lethal threat of fossil fuels. Everyone should see the NECESSITY series. The films are inspiring and profoundly informative.
Naomi Klein, Professor of Climate Justice, University of British Columbia
Filmmaker, and author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything.
I wish that every high school student in the country could watch Necessity. This is a damning portrait of the bankers and builders who crisscross the country with fossil fuel pipelines — and yet it sings with courage and hope. The film offers an intimate look at what happens when people of conscience disobey the law, but stand up for Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and our future.
Bill Bigelow, Curriculum Editor, Rethinking Schools
Co-Director Zinn Education Project.
"Wielding the bristling urgency and incisive candor of past projects…Haaken illuminates the forgotten providers who work amid the ever-present danger of harassment and the daunting thicket of restrictions enacted by government and, all too often, their own medical facilities."
–-Willamette Week
“…shining a light on the abortion issue from a vital yet neglected angle...it’s also dense with winning personalities and vital insights, such that its 78-minute running time flies by...Haaken allows her subjects to expound on the reasons they do what they do, and to describe a typical day – such as at is – in an abortion clinic."
–-Lenz: Cinema St. Louis