From its discovery by the Curies in 1898 to its use as a medicine and a glow-in-the-dark paint, and finally to its role in the development of the a-bomb, radium has a followed a rare and lurid trajectory. This is a story of discovery--my own, Marie Curie's, and the radium dialpainters', the thousand-some women hired to paint clock dials with luminous radium paint from 1918 to 1970. I use narration, music, interviews, and archival sound to explore the bizarre history of radium (which is also, tragically, a history of women in the workplace), along with my own surprising connections to the radium dialpainters of Ottawa, Illinois. "Undark" is a documentary and personal essay combined, and I hope that it captures both the optimism and will-to-ignorance that has always accompanied radium--the most seductive element on the periodic table. 

From its discovery by the Curies in 1898 to its use as a medicine and a glow-in-the-dark paint, and finally to its role in the development of the a-bomb, radium has a followed a rare and lurid trajectory. This is a story of discovery--my own, Marie Curie's, and the radium dialpainters', the thousand-some women hired to paint clock dials with luminous radium paint from 1918 to 1970. I use narration, music, interviews, and archival sound to explore the bizarre history of radium (which is also, tragically, a history of women in the workplace), along with my own surprising connections to the radium dialpainters of Ottawa, Illinois. "Undark" is a documentary and personal essay combined, and I hope that it captures both the optimism and will-to-ignorance that has always accompanied radium--the most seductive element on the periodic table.