Sat May 26 | 2:00 pm | VIFC

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Twenty-one years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, two documentary teams create films that portray, in very distinct ways, life after Chernobyl. Preceded by a surprising short film that depicts the march of “progress” in reverse.

Undo

Director: Jean-Gabriel Périot, France, 2005, 10 minutes
To create a better world, “undo” it.

Half Life: a Journey to Chernobyl

Director: Phil Grabsky & David Bickerstaff, United Kingdom, 2006, 40 minutes
Poetry by Mario Petrucci
Based on Mario Petrucci’s award-winning book-length poem for Chernobyl, this film tells the story of the people who dealt with the world’s worst nuclear disaster at ground level: the fire-fighters, the soldiers, the “liquidators” and their families. Petrucci’s poetry, based on eye-witness accounts of the disaster, forms the backbone of the film’s narrative. The poems are cut together with revealing archival and evocative location footage of the ghost-town of Pripyat and the surrounding exclusion zone.

Directors Grabsky and Bickerstaff travelled to the deserted town of Pripyat and the interior of the destroyed reactor to meet some of the “settlers” who have rebuilt their lives inside the radioactive area, despite official advice. Working closely with Petrucci, they then created a film which, rather than relating the technical details of the world’s biggest ever industrial accident, emphasises the effects of the disaster on the people of Chernobyl.

A Sunday in Pripyat

Director: Frederic Cousseau & Blandine Huk, France, 2006, 26 minutes
Director Blandine Huk in attendance; discussion to follow.
Twenty years after the Cherynobyl nuclear disaster we return to Pripyat, a model city built in the early 1970s. Lying in the heart of the “forbidden zone,” this city was once inhabited by 50,000 people, many of them workers at the nuclear power plant. When an invisible enemy forced the residents of Pripyat and surrounding villages to evacuate the area, Pripyat became a ghost town. Although the land it was constructed upon appears to have reverted back to its natural state, traces of its former occupants are still visible some twenty years after. We hear the sounds of the activity of a restaurant, a cinema, a swimming pool, a nursery, as if people still inhabit these places.

Winner– 2nd Jury Prize, International Documentary Shorts Film Competition, Documenta Madrid

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