The House in the Middle is the title of two American documentary film shorts (13 minutes), respectively from 1953 and 1954, which showed the effects of a nuclear bomb test on a set of three small houses.
The black-and-white 1953 film was created by the Federal Civil Defense Administration to attempt to show that a clean, freshly painted house (the middle house) is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its poorly maintained counterparts (the right and left houses).
A color version was released the next year by the American Coatings Association, [1] [2] [3] [4] a "bureau" invented by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association trade group (now known as the American Coatings Association). [5] [6]
Footage for the film was recorded during the Upshot-Knothole Encore test at the Nevada Test Site on May 8, 1953. [7]
In 2001, the Library of Congress deemed the 1954 film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. [8] [9]
It was featured on Rick Prelinger's 2004 collage film Panorama Ephemera. [10]
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