For over seventy-five years, the United States of America has been praising those who worked on the Manhattan Project, as well as the people responsible for the creation of the nuclear bomb. What people don’t know is the countless lives affected by the testing and creation of the bombs. The nuclear testing carried out in locations such as New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah has resulted in the suffering of thousands of lives and will continue to inflict pain for generations to come.

The David Kendrick Memorial Series is a talk held by a guest speaker every year to commemorate the Communications and Film production major with a minor in writing David Kendriken. In this series, they invite guests with knowledge in communications and film production to come and talk to students and whoever wants to attend. The David Kendriken memorial series has been around ever since 2016 and has aimed to show what he was passionate about to the masses and anyone who will watch.

This year’s series was held on November 15 and had the main goal of introducing those to what 5mm film can look like in a documentary on those affected by nuclear testing in America. The films done by Taylor Dunne and Eric Stewart were titled “Off Country,” which showed the lives and the ways the nuclear bomb testing affected their livelihoods. The snippet shown at the presentation was about thirty minutes long and showed us the lives of three people affected by the testing.

Before the movie started, the two speakers Taylor Dunne and Eric Stewart shared works that they have done over the years and some of their backstories. They expressed their love for filmmaking and why they decided to shoot the movie how they did. They talked about pieces of work that they had done in the past and they also talked about what they did to express emotion in this film. They also gave details about what they planned to do in the future with this piece. They expressed their emotion about making another short movie out of other information they gathered and how they wanted to write a book after this movie was completed.

During the movie, some of the scenes depicted desolate land masses where homesteads used to stay and people in old pictures and how their lives were cut short by the radiation from the bombs being dropped in their surrounding areas. The movie depicts a scene of a man in his childhood home. He clarifies to those posing questions that his mother, along with the families of many people in the nearby area, has experienced the impact of cancer in a similar manner. The bombs that they dropped led the population of the small town in New Mexico to develop cancer and pass it down from generation to generation.

The David Kendrick Memorial Series’ main job is to express emotion through film and to explain to people the backstory behind powerful pieces of work which was expressed through this year’s presentation “Off Country.”