"Black Pain" (Alexander Igishev, Evgeny Kоzinsky). Chernobyl, 1987

"Black Pain", by Alexander Igishev

The title in Russian plays on the word "Chernobyl", which means "Black stem".

The short film by the Soviet director, documentarist, Chernobyl liquidator, and a real Human, Alexander Igishev.

Black Pain was filmed in 1987 in Pripyat at his own initiative. It was only after the reel got international approval that Odessa film studio, where he worked as a director at the time, started listing the film as its own. The film combines documentary footage from Pripyat with scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker", that was created 8 years before the disaster.

At the end of the film, one can hear recital of the New Testament, Book of Revelations (6 : 12-17). The word "Chernobyl", in addition to the literal meaning of "black stem", is also the name of a grass - wormwood. The "Star of Wormwood" is an image from Revelations (8 : 11), referring to a star that shall fall upon the Earth and make the drinking water bitter, poison it.

Alexander Igishev's works include films for children: "To Be a Human Being", "I Am Hortitsa", "The Fate of the Drummer", and many other.

From our Telegram channel "Beorn And The Shieldmaiden": https://t.me/BeornAndTheShieldmaiden/4529

Alexander Igishev was a family friend, and following my mother's stories, I tried to find this movie several times, and recently discovered it on YouTube. I've archived it. And a few months later, the film was blocked by the "copy-righters" (probably because of the footage from "Stalker"). I'm posting the film here, with a description written by Eugene, the grandson of the cameraman, who originally posted it on YouTube.

Hello everyone, friends. Today, in a conversation with a friend, I remembered about the disaster that happened in Chernobyl, at the nuclear power plant. And I have a personal story related to it. Just a year later, after the accident, my grandfather, Evgeny Kozinsky, together with director Alexander Igishev, went to Chernobyl (Pripyat) to shoot a short documentary about Chernobyl. I present it to your attention below. You will be able to see the footage that my grandfather personally saw through the lens of his film camera while in Chernobyl, shortly after those tragic events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nEDYedM80o