Life on the Atomic River. In Russian. 60 minutes. NTSC format, all regions. ISBN 1-58269-023-5
(one video DVD, 31-page PDF transcript by download).
Director of photography: Slavomir Grunberg. Edited and produced by Slava Paperno.
US Copyright Registration Number PA0001312090.
$39.00.
Three atomic accidents and fifty years of nuclear waste dumping have turned the Techa River into
toxic hell. Chelyabinsk-40, an atomic weapons factory, was a top secret installation, and both its accidents
and the lethal effects on the local ecology were a closely guarded secret, even from the people
most affected by it. Everyone noticed that the villagers were dying of cancer in their forties and that birth
defects were rampant, but no one knew why. Now that the truth is out, how are these people coping?
And what are the lessons to be learned?
We watch the filmmakers interview dozens of people in the villages: doctors, farmers, teachers, children, and
local officials. So many questions, so little clarity... It is hard to come to grips with something so
cruel and so grossly misrepresented and misunderstood.
We hear that the locals didn't know anything. Yet the officials
claim that the population was warned. A teacher stands in the snow on the river bank and explains
that the bridge is too far away, and it is faster and easier to simply walk across the frozen river.
Then a local activist puts her radiation meter on the river ice and reports a level that is a hundred
times higher than normal.
SHOW MORE
A local physicist tells us how proud he was as he watched his nuclear bomb being attached to an
airplane. He admits that the attention bestowed on him by the highest government officials
may have warped his judgement. He doesn't have much to say about the effect of his work on the population
whose cattle was grazing on the river banks.
An administrator, who is still the head of the factory, admits nothing, though he does say that
the times were different: when Stalin was sending thousands to labor camps, human rights
were not protected by law. Is he sorry? He doesn't appear to be. But he casts his eyes down as
he speaks in his spacious office with a portrait of Lenin on the wall. So much is below the surface,
so much for the viewer to think about...
The same film may be used online in our Cloud pages, with the
transcript displayed on your computer or tablet next to the video, and every word
in the transcript linked to a gloss or a comment. Why, then, buy the DVD? We think that a teacher may prefer
using this DVD in class with a DVD player and room projector, and an individual
learner, too, may very well benefit from the DVD's superior image and sound quality.
For artistic impression and practice in listening comprehension, watching a film
on your TV is a different experience than working with short scenes, transcripts,
and glossaries on your computer screen. The transcript (with no glosses or notes)
may be downloaded and printed.
Using documentary films for language learning fits our teaching philosophy.
We have done this again and again in our own courses.
A film by accomplished and talented filmmakers tells the language learner
much more about the foreign culture, people, and country than can be said in words.
Since a language learner is informationally disadvantaged to begin with, this
is very helpful.
By the nature of its genre, a documentary film is especially rich in carefully
focused information. An idea, an attitude, a controversy is what drives a good
documentary. This is the stuff that makes us think, and we know that learning
of any kind—including language learning—must involve thinking. Formal language
exercises with their typically disjointed pieces of information that have little relevance to
our lives are never as effective as a story that consumes the viewer.
Unlike a typical textbook exercise, the language spoken by characters in a documentary is
usually not scripted and thus reflects the speaker's personality and background. This is
likely to benefit the learner in a number of ways: unscripted speech is more
believable (and therefore more engaging), closer to the actual everyday language use
(and therefore important to experience), and is rich with all the irregularities of
linguistic reality (unfinished sentences, conversational fillers, on-the-spot
creative distortions, etc.) that very few textbooks tell us about.
Our documentaries are not filmed for language learners, but they are
edited with the language learner in mind. We tend to create short,
well-focused scenes; avoid excessive use of music and sound effects that
interfere with listening comprehension; and stay clear of ideology. But we
do not shy away from challenging the viewer, both intellectually and emotionally,
because learning is enhanced when the learner is engaged.
Slawomir Grunberg
is an Emmy Award winning documentary producer, director,
cameraman, and editor born in Lublin, Poland. He is a graduate of the Polish Film
School in Lodz, where he studied cinematography and directing. He emigrated from
Poland to the US in 1981, and has since directed and produced over 40 television
documentaries. In addition to the national Emmy Award for his film
School Prayer: A Community At War, he has won a regional Emmy Award,
four Grand Prix awards
at various international film festivals, several Best Documentary awards, and
numerous other honors and prizes. Grunberg's Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot
on the Planet, a television documentary produced from the same footage as
Life on the Atomic River, won the Grand Prix at the International Nature and
Environment Film Festival in Grenoble, France; the Best of the Environment Award
at the Vermont International Film Festival in Vermont, USA; and the
Journalistic Achievement Award at the International Ecological Film Festival in Frieburg, Germany.
Slava Paperno
has directed the Russian Language Program at Cornell University since 1991.
In addition to his many publications for learners of Russian, both in print and
electronic, he has published over two dozen Russian translations of works
by American, British, and Canadian authors. In 2000, he received the
Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy award for “achievements in computer-
and video-assisted language teaching” from the American Association of Teachers
of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL). In 2005, AATSEEL awarded
its Best Contribution prize to Lauren G. Leighton's Modern Russian Culture (available at
this website) that was designed and produced by Slava Paperno.