Output details

‘The Toxic Camera’, Film

Brief Description

Video, 19 minutes, gauze box, 2 mirrors, single monitor. ‘The Toxic Camera’ reflects upon the Chernobyl disaster, and was inspired by the film "Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks" made by the Soviet filmmaker Volodymyr Shevchenko in the days immediately following the accident. The film was selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival where it premiered in 2013.

Research Rationale The film script was developed from interviews conducted with Chernobyl 'veterans' (Nuclear plant workers, physicists, helicopter pilots) and with Shevchenko's film crew, 25 years after the incident.

Upon processing the film, Shevchenko noticed portions of it were heavily pockmarked and affected by static interference, coinciding with the sound of measuring radiation from the Geiger counter, thus realising that radiation was effectively 'visible' on the film material itself. (The camera Schevchenko used was so toxic it had to be buried). Our fascination with the film, therefore, is that by capturing radiation directly onto the film stock, it becomes an event in itself. The film is a reflection on the materiality of film as an event, as well as considering the human impact of the disaster in Chernobyl.

Methodologies used

We visited the Kiev National film Archive in order to view extracts from Shevchenko’s film, and worked with the cultural theorist Dr. Susan Schuppli and the writer Tony White, to develop a script from the interviews we had made in Kiev. After much research we located the camera burial site in The Pirigovo Radioactive Waste Facility, in Kiev and secured permission to film there. We also filmed in the National Cinematheque of Ukraine, Kiev and on Orford Ness, Suffolk coast. The voice-over for the film was spoken by Sergii Mirnyi, a Chernobyl veteran. We cast the performers from unknown actors based in Kiev.