Screening of Chornobyl documentary is centerpiece of U.N. commemoration (05/09/04)

Screening of Chornobyl documentary is centerpiece of U.N. commemoration

by Andrew Nynka

UNITED NATIONS - In conjunction with a series of events that commemorated the 18th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, the United Nations hosted a special screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary film "Chernobyl Heart" here on April 27 for an audience of several hundred people.

The 39-minute film, produced and directed by American documentary filmmaker Maryann DeLeo, was shot predominantly in Belarus between 2001 and 2003. It focuses much of its attention on children in that country who are suffering from a variety of radiation-related sicknesses.

The documentary, which won an Academy Award for best short documentary film on February 29, follows a group of officials from the Chernobyl Children's Project International, a New York-based international humanitarian aid organization that has worked in Belarus for the past 12 years.

The group made several trips into the exclusion zone, to locations within sight of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, to several sparsely populated villages in the area and, mainly, to a number of Belarusian hospitals, cancer centers, orphanages and mental asylums.

Ms. DeLeo said she wanted to work with CCPI because of the organization's deep network of contacts throughout Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and because the group was able to let her film a number of patients, doctors and caregivers as they interacted with each other. The results of her work elicited very strong reactions from the audience here.

Speaking at the U.N. prior to the film's presentation, Ms. DeLeo told the audience that she contacted CCPI Founder and Executive Director Adi Roche in 2001 with the idea of making a documentary after having seen a photography exhibit on the subject at the U.N. headquarters building earlier that year.

Ms. DeLeo said she remembered being astonished to learn that, while the number of children suffering from radiation-related illnesses was increasing, "international aid and attention has been progressively diminishing." Birth defects and cancer rates in the region have reportedly shot up over the past few years.

Ms. Roche, who appears as a narrator throughout much of the film, also addressed the audience that gathered to watch the film at the U.N. with a message of hope. "We wanted to make a film that would be all witness, all testimony, to the despair, to the suffering, to the agony, to the isolation of this tragedy," Ms. Roche said. "But we also promised that it would show some hope. And we believe that it does."

"So [the film] follows the pathway of radioactivity from the reactor itself, right through to the life of pregnant women, to children, to the land and to the life of ordinary people in the deserted villages, people who are evacuated, and scientific people, the medical world. We talk to everybody," Ms. Roche told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

"Particularly, we concentrated [the film] on Belarus, because they have the largest problem of the three affected regions, even though it is substantial in the other two regions also," Ms. DeLeo said.

"The larger existing U.S. charities that provide aid and rehabilitation programs in the region focus almost exclusively on the [sic] Ukraine. A relatively large Ukrainian population in the United States has formed several successful organizations that deliver humanitarian aid to their homeland. Belarus, however, received 70 percent of the radiation fallout and suffers an ever-growing health crisis. The need for medical treatment and humanitarian programs for these children is greater now than it was 16 years ago," reads a statement on the CCPI website.

The film also featured the work of Dr. William Novick, a cardiac surgeon and founder and medical director of the International Children's Heart Foundation, who has traveled to the region on a number of occasions.

In perhaps the most moving portion of the film, Dr. Novick surgically repairs the heart of an adolescent girl whose parents had been previously told by Belarusian doctors that the condition - referred to in the region as "Chornobyl heart" - is inoperable and fatal.

The film captures the interaction between doctor and parent as Dr. Novick tells the child's mother that her daughter will live a normal and healthy life. The mother weeps after hearing the news and repeatedly proclaims "thank you, thank you." Dr. Novick, moments later speaking directly to the camera, appears to have been affected by the encounter and notes with sadness that a somewhat routine surgery in the West is considered "inoperable" in the Chornobyl region.

Speaking at the United Nations, Dr. Novick said that last year 7,500 children in Belarus required the corrective surgery, while only 300 received it. In Ukraine, the film notes, there are 10,000 children on the waiting list for the surgical procedure, and only 2,500 will receive the operation. Many of the rest, Dr. Novick told the audience that greeted him with a standing ovation, will die while the waiting list will continue to grow.

"For my country, Chornobyl is not only a pain of the past, but a problem of the present and a challenge of the future," said Ambassador Valeriy Kuchinsky, Ukraine's permanent representative to the U.N., prior to the screening. "Unfortunately, with the passage of time - particularly since the closing of the Chornobyl station in 2000 - the problem of Chornobyl is gradually losing its momentum and is becoming, for some, yet another boring issue on the United Nations agenda."

"I think that the documentary film we are going to see tonight will speak to these people, especially children, much better and more effectively than hundreds of officials. We are very grateful to Ms. DeLeo and her team for the great work done in reflecting on today's consequences of the Chornobyl accident," Mr. Kuchinsky said.

Also speaking prior to the film's screening, Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said, "The international community must renew its efforts to help the people of the affected regions take control of their lives again. The aftermath of the Chornobyl accident is simply too much for people in the contaminated areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine to cope with alone."

"We simply cannot turn our backs. We can and must do more to help bring development and hope to the affected people," said Mr. Egeland, who is also the U.N. coordinator of international cooperation on Chornobyl.

The United Nations, together with the governments of the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, in association with HBO/Cinemax Documentary Films, organized the screening in the U.N. General Assembly Hall. According to Kathy Ryan, a member of the Board of Directors at CCPI, HBO plans to show the Chernobyl Heart documentary in September. Ms. Ryan said a specific date is not yet known.

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