#Upper volta with missles full
#Upper volta with missles tv

We see families walking in the manicured company town of Pripyat after the accident as if nothing had happened. A scene from Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes.īut Jones obtained the pre-edited Soviet videotapes, which are crude, rudimentary, and in black-and-white. There are even shots of the forest around the reactor complex coming back to life. There are images of some of those workers smiling as they appear to be healing in hospitals (before the radiation exposure kills them). We’ve seen this footage in standard documentaries about Chernobyl - emergency alerts, workers labeled “liquidators” proudly stripped to their waists, “volunteering” with shovels to dig out debris. Edited and scripted footage was broadcast selectively - very selectively - for propaganda purposes. At that point, Russian film crews had already been dispatched to document cleanup efforts. The Soviets only acknowledged the disaster after abnormally high levels of radiation were detected in Sweden. Officially, the crisis was downplayed - it still is. In Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, we see the stark black-and-white footage of the immediate aftermath of the April 1986 accident. It could be a threat once more if the tide in that war turns. Less reassuring is that Chernobyl, a danger in 1986, was at risk again during the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine this year. It’s reassuring that the doc was made and its revelations are public.

#Upper volta with missles full

The film won an honorable mention - second place – for the top prize at this year’s Full Frame Festival in Durham, NC. The Soviet Union cut corners as it modernized, and its citizens at Chernobyl paid an agonizing price.

#Upper volta with missles tv

It’s well documented in the wrenching new TV film, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, by the veteran British filmmaker James Jones. Though condescending, his point was still well founded. But Schmidt could just as easily have said that the Soviet Union was Upper Volta with nuclear reactors. Helmut Schmidt, the former West German chancellor, called the Soviet Union “Upper Volta with missiles.” Never mind that there is no longer a place called the Soviet Union or one called Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso). But also be prepared for a horror story that is far worse than what was reported at the time - but not as bad as it could have been.