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THE BABUSHKAS OF CHERNOBYL was selected as one of the top 10 Editor’s Choice films for 2016 by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association.

The film journeys into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone several decades after the world’s worst nuclear disaster. The tightly regulated 1000 square mile Dead Zone remains one of the most radioactively contaminated places on Earth. Surprisingly, a defiant, spirited group of elderly women scratches out an existence in this lethal landscape. The resilient babushkas are the last survivors of a small community who refused to leave their ancestral homes after the Chernobyl disaster.

Chernobyl was also recently in the news with the completion of a concrete sarcophagus that now covers the reactor. The film captures images of the sarcophagus under construction, which will need to last longer than the pyramids in Egypt to prevent further radiation releases.

"Starred Review. This award-winning documentary captures a land that time forgot and the world has avoided.”
-Booklist

Physicist Richard Garwin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Tuesday, Nov 22. Garwin helped shape history as designer of the first hydrogen bomb and later as a science and arms control adviser to Presidents, including on climate change and energy. Through his work at IBM’s research center, Garwin is also known for his contributions to Magnetic Resonance Imaging, computer touch screens and laser printing.

The film GARWIN profiles Richard Garwin's life and work. He received his Ph.D. under Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, who later invited him to work at Los Alamos on the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Fermi called Garwin "the only true genius he ever met". In recent years he was part of an elite group of scientists asked to help plug the BP oil spill and find solutions to contain the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. His lifes’ work was also honored with the National Medal of Science.

We've just upgraded The Video Project website, as you no doubt have seen.

Very good news for the world’s oceans. The last pristine ocean ecosystem remaining on earth is now protected thanks to a landmark agreement hammered out by 24 nations and the European Union. Over 600,000 square miles of the Ross Sea in Antarctica will be off-lmits to commercial fishing and hunting of marine life.

The Ross Sea is a deep bay in the Antarctic Ocean, which produces about three-quarters of the nutrients that sustain life in the rest of the world’s oceans, upwelled by currents that carry them around the world.

BBC - World’s largest marine protected area declared in Antarctica
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37789594

THE LAST OCEAN film profiles the Ross Sea and the long international battle to protect it. Featuring top scientists, including Dr. Sylvia Earle and Dr. Daniel Pauly, as well as international political leaders, the film examines both the science and politics behind the efforts to preserve Earth’s last truly wild ocean.

The 2016 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Conference has selected six Video Project films to screen at the event in late October in Denver. The six films are: Shout Gladi Gladi, How I Got Over, My Depression: The Up and Down and Up of It, The Battle of amfAR, Free the Mind, The Last One.