Meet the DocuWeek Filmmakers: Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff--'Half Life: A Journey to Chernobyl'

Over the next few weeks, we at IDA will be introducing our community to the filmmakers whose work will be represented in the DocuWeek^TM Theatrical Documentary Showcase, August 18-24. We asked the filmmakers to share the stories behind their films the inspirations, the challenges and obstacles, the goals and objectives, the reactions to their films so far.
So, to continue this series of conversations, here are Phil Grabsky, director/producer, and David Bickerstaff, director, of Half Life: A Journey to Chernobyl.

IDA: How did you get started in documentary filmmaking?
 
Phil Grabsky: I started in 1984 when I made a film about the Dalai Lama, who was then 25 years in exile and now it's 45! I know that makes me sound old, but I'm not really! My first doc for TV was made when I was 21; I was lucky to be starting just when the UK doc industry opened up.
 
David Bickerstaff: Half Life is my first documentary in the traditional sense, though I have been making short, observational films as part of my artist practice for years usually without or (with) minimal sound. Phil and I have been good friends for a long time and have always been interested in each other's creative practice. While Phil was carving out a successful career in documentaries, I was producing immersive video installations for museums and visitor centers. We were both dealing with factual material, just presenting it in a different context.
 

IDA: What inspired you to make Half Life: A Journey to Chernobyl?
 
PG: I had just finished In Search of Mozart and was preparing for that film's cinema release when a colleague approached me with one of the strongest collections of poetry I have ever read. That poetry, written by Mario Petrucci about Chernobyl, made me want to immediately make a film but one that had some aspirations to be an artwork in itself. That made me want to co-direct with one of the UK's leading digital filmmakers and artists, David Bickerstaff.

DB: When Phil sent me a copy of Mario's epic poem for Chernobyl, I was struck by the highly visual language Mario uses and the natural cinematic structure inherit in the storytelling. Most of the documentaries I have seen on the Chernobyl disaster deal with either the facts and figures of the aftermath, the Chernobyl children or reconstructions of the events leading up to the explosion. All these approaches are very relevant and engaging, but Mario's poem presented us with an opportunity to access the testimony of survivors in a different and powerful way. It opened up the process of constructing a unique narrative form and offered a more abstract approach to filming.

 
IDA: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?
 
PG: Raising funds for a poetry-based film about Chernobyl was tough; we had to pay for most of it ourselves in the end. But raising funds is always tough; the real challenge here was a creative one: How does one translate poetry onto film? That raised many creative questions and challenges; I don't know how many we successfully achieved, but the reaction to the film so far has been tremendously encouraging that we did something right!

DB: During the first meeting between Phil, Mario and myself, it became apparent that the creative dynamic was going to prove an interesting challenge. We didn't want to fall into the trap of some other poetry-led films, where the images only served to illustrate the poems in a slavish way. Having never been to the Chernobyl zone, Phil and I were interested in documenting our own understanding of the people and the place before we got too confined by the imagery woven into the fabric of the poems. During our first filming week in the zone we struggled more with making sense of what is fact and what is mythology. We kept asking our Russian minder questions like how much radiation are we being exposed to, and is it dangerous? He kept saying it is safe, but the nature of radiation always gives you cause to be suspicious. Access to the zone was bureaucratic but not difficult (with the right papers). It was while we were filming the abandoned apartments, schools and hospitals in the nearby ghost town of Pripyat that the poems started to come into focus cinematically.

 
IDA: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?
 
PG: I think traveling on more than one occasion to the Ukraine and Chernobyl itself made a distinct impression on both David and me. I don't want to say too much about that, as it may color how someone views the film but, suffice to say, visiting the site of the world's worst nuclear accident was quite a journey.

DB: The film grew rather organically around the poems. The first shoot was about Phil and I getting an understanding of the main protagonists, the Reactor, Pripyat and the surrounding restricted zone. The second shoot was focused on the sequences that we felt were necessary to complete the film. The most discussion was during the editing process, where we wanted to maintain an economy in the edit that would allow the viewer to engage with the poems instinctively and formulate their own relationship with the characters.

 
IDA: As you've screened Half Life: A Journey to Chernobyl --whether on the festival circuit, or in screening rooms, or in living rooms--how have audiences reacted to the film? What has been most surprising or unexpected about their reactions?
 
PG: To be honest, the film has deliberately not been sold to TV yet. We have focused on the art/poetry/literary and film festival circuits. (The UK cinema release is later this year). And the reaction has been very strong. I guess I now feel I may have worried too much whether an audience could sustain its interest in a film driven by poetry, albeit poetry of this caliber. The audience reactions so far have surprised me by being completely positive in that regard. Many also don't even notice that there is no narrator or interviews. This, of course, only confirms my belief that we are being enormously short-changed by the narrow focus of many (overwhelmingly television) documentaries that are location/archive/interview, and seem made to a kit or formula that really is very dull. TV commissioning editors, please note: We don't need dramatized reconstructions to help us understand history!

DB: From the Q&A sessions we have been involved with at viewings, there has been a real sense of genuine engagement with the subject particularly as the nuclear debate has intensified again. Many are curious to know more about the conditions in the zone, but we have also had a lot of positive feedback about the film's structure and how the poetry and visuals have combined to formulate a unique narrative. I was slightly concerned that audiences would have a problem relating to characters, as their testimonies are couched in a poetic structure and voiced by actors. But so far the opposite has been the case, which gives us confidence that we have the balance right in the storytelling.

IDA: What docs or docmakers have served as inspirations for you?
 
PG: I was lucky growing up in a Britain that had such a strong television documentary tradition filmmakers with both craft and sincerity like Paul Watson. The '80s were a great time for the 40- or 50-minute observational doc, but then in the late '80s, everything changed and went rapidly downhill. The '90s were a very uninspiring time, until one started seeing what was happening at film festivals: You could see more great (moving, funny, important) documentaries in one weekend at a festival than in weeks on the TV. Dennis O'Rourke influenced me in the mid-'90s. I admired the way that, more or less, he just went off and made the film he wanted to make. He's pragmatic, too, and plays the game, but he makes films that you want to go and see and be moved by or challenged by. Funnily enough, having been motivated by him, I bumped into him in Kabul where we both shooting alone in 2003. And he gave me his last beer! Good on yer mate!

DB:  I recently saw Serbian Epics by Pawel Pawlikowski, which had great camera work and constructed a fascinating portrait of Radovan Karadzic using powerful sequences and an economy of shots. I really admired the cinematic style of the film and its observational compositions. I would like to see more experimentation with the documentary format and the development of new narratives that are more visually expansive and less generic in structure.

To view the entire Docuweek program, visit http://documentary.org/programs/index_06.php.
To download and view the Docuweek schedule, visit http://documentary.org/src/DW/DocuWeek_Schedule.pdf.
To purchase tickets to Docuweek, visit www.ArcLightcinemas.com.