Controversial filmmaker finds interest in Ukraine’s disasters
Apparently, nothing compares to Ukraine’s disasters – not hurricanes, not volcanoes, not tornadoes.
At least that is the opinion of Peter Rowe, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker who came to Ukraine last month to shoot documentaries about the worst ecological disasters of the Soviet times.
Two out of the three “disasters” – one real, the second only a potential disaster – belong to Ukraine, in Chornobyl and Balaklava.
“I have survived 12 hurricanes, climbed over 10 volcanoes, witnessed and filmed over 40 tornadoes and still think Ukraine’s Chornobyl is one of the worst ecological disasters in the world, though is seems very peaceful at first sight,” said Rowe, who started making documentaries in the 1960s. “My family said I was crazy to go there.”
The 1986 Chornobyl power plant was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. One of its reactors exploded and its core melted down, spewing radioactive particles over large parts of Ukraine and Belarus. Radioactive clouds reached as far as Scandinavia and Scotland. A zone 30 kilometers in radius still remains uninhabitable.
“The thing is, you cannot see, smell, hear or feel the danger there, but you know it surrounds you everywhere and the consequences of such a visit are unknown,” Rowe said.
Besides Chornobyl, Rowe is focusing on Crimea’s Balaklava, a town near Sevastopol, with a museum of submarines. The Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan will round out Rowe’s three-part series of documentaries called “the three worst examples of ecological disasters of the Soviet times.”
They continue Rowe’s adventure reality show called “Angry Planet,” (www.angryplanet.tv), broadcast on the “Travel Channel” in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. The new documentaries will be aired next year.
What should viewers expect to see?
TV presenter George Kourounis will heighten drama in the Chornobyl film by describing how he feels when exposed to radiation in the exclusion zone. “He’ll say things like ‘in some areas of Chornobyl you should not be staying longer than 15 minutes; but we are staying here longer to let you feel the danger,’” Rowe said.
Rowe also filmed a near-disaster. In Crimea, Rowe filmed a secret nuclear-powered submarine repair station in a rock in Balaklava Bay, just east of Sevastopol. The Balaklava facility is unique because it is hidden between two hills and invisible from either land or sea. There used to be a noisy mine nearby, drowning out all the other sounds.
“Even the locals did not know there was danger not far away,” said Rowe. “Viewers will see Kourounis, the host of the show, talking to them about his emotions and feelings being fully inside of a projectile shell, only with his head outside. I hope from my film they will remember Ukraine as being as interesting as I saw it myself.”
Some of Rowe’s movies are memorable indeed.
Last year he released a documentary called “Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong,” which was pulled off the air of the Canadian CBC channel because of the objections of Chinese diplomats.
The film tells a story of a Canadian member of Falun Gong’s spiritual movement who ended up in a Chinese labor camp. The movement itself was outlawed in China in 1999. Chinese authorities have been accused of unlawful capture, interrogations, killings and even selling the organs of Falun Gong members, but they repeatedly denied the accusations.
A shortened version of Rowe’s documentary was aired on CBC eventually, but the website of the channel was then blocked in China from December 2007 until the Olympics kicked off in August 2008.
This film that caused controversy was shown in Kyiv on Nov. 27-30 during the international human rights festival “Stupeni” (Steps). Rowe’s documentary was nominated for an award, but he said it’s something else he was seeking. “The main thing for me as the director is not whether it receives awards or not, but the fact that the international community should understand human rights, it should be respected in any and all countries,” Rowe said.
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