Research Guides: Chernobyl Reactor Digital Scholarship Project: Additional Sources

Documentaries

Meltdown in Chernobyl
At Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, several critical errors were made during routine testing. The situation quickly spiraled out of control, leading to a catastrophic explosion. The worst nightmare in the world's nuclear industry had just been realized.
Glasnost Film Festival: Chernobyl: Chronicle of difficult weeks
The Glasnost Film Festival is a collection featuring 22 Soviet documentary films produced or released in the beginning of the "Glasnost Era" -- 1987-1988. These films definitively document the dramatic cultural and political changes that led to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. All were produced originally on 35mm film and are subtitled in English. Volume 4 - Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks, 54 min. The first film made following the nuclear accident focuses on the immediate aftermath of the disaster and the cleanup effort.
Pripyat
After the nuclear catastrophe in 1986, a 30 km. restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. Pripyat is a portrait of the people who still live and work there, and of those who have moved back.

La supplication = Voices from Chernobyl
Based on the book by Svetlana Alexievich, recipient of a Nobel Prize in Literature, La Supplication (Voices from Chernobyl) does not deal with Chernobyl, but rather with the world of Chernobyl, about which we know very little. Eyewitness reports have survived: scientists, teachers, journalists, couples, children ... They tell of their old daily lives, then of the catastrophe. Their voices form a long, terrible but necessary supplication which traverses borders and stimulates us to question our status quo.
HBO Chernobyl: 5 part mini series
This is the DVD of the HBo mini series. You can borrow external DVD drives and readers from the circulation desk in Canaday.

State Archival Service of Ukraine
This collection contains documentary photos from the Exclusion Zone, official letters, minutes of meetings of the Communist Party, reports and reports of the party members and the leadership of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the accident; photographs, questionnaires, certificates of the liquidators of the accident, and letters and telegrams of people, who offered to help those affected by the disaster.
Wilson Center Digital Archives
This collection contains Ukrainian and national KGB reports, Communist Party directives, and Ukrainian Academy of Science measurements which discuss technical issues with the plant, details of the accident, and emergency responses across the republic. It shows that updates from the construction site and first few years of plant operation were dire as early as the 1970s. The collection also demonstrates that the government failed to inform the public of the true scope of radiation damage for years after the accident.