Genre
Synopsis
AFRAID OF THE SHADOW OF YOUR OWN BOMB is an essay film that takes the tone of a dark tragedy set amidst the backdrop of the Red Scare, just eight years after the Holocaust. Communism was the enemy, the nuclear arms race was in full swing, and paranoia was in the air. A cyclone of nationalist fear, propaganda and madness led to the conviction and execution of the “Man-Wife Spy Team,” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. And the “steely, stony, tight-lipped woman” who was “cold and unfeeling” became the symbolic mastermind of an egregious, treasonous operation to share nuclear spy secrets with the Russians. Except there was one problem: she was innocent. So why was this young, idealistic, leftist Jewish American housewife executed?
Bio
Kate Trumbull-LaValle is a Peabody Award winning documentary filmmaker. Her directorial debut with longtime collaborator Joanna Sokolowski, "Ovarian Psycos" (2016), had its world premiere at SXSW 2016 and was picked up for a national broadcast in 2017 on the Emmy award winning series, Independent Lens (PBS). In 2018 Kate and Joanna directed two one-hour broadcast films for public television, "Artist and Mother" (Artbound/KCET) and "City Rising: The Informal Economy" (KCET). Both films were nominated for an LA Area Emmy, and both titles won LA Press Awards. In 2019 Kate co-produced the groundbreaking 5-part PBS series, "Asian Americans" (2020) which won a Peabody Award. Kate is currently a producer for Walidah Imarisha's Afro-futurist hybrid documentary, "Space to Breathe", supported by Working Films and the International Documentary Association. In between directing and producing longform films, Kate directs social issue, nonfiction broadcast and digital content for nonprofits, social issue campaigns, and communications firms. Kate teaches documentary film at California State University, Long Beach, is a UC Berkeley Human Rights Fellow (2010) and graduated with an M.A. from the Social Documentation Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
