MURMANSK, April 4. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic environmental project plans to organize screening of Soviet films found during a cleanup mission to the Chukotka Autonomous Region, the organization's CEO Andrey Nagibin told TASS.
Clean Arctic's volunteers have found more than 10 feature and documentary films. They may be identified during the restoration, he added.
"In Chukotka, we've managed to find rare films, many of which are in good condition. We are going to restore them and to organize a special screening," he said. "This year, the Clean Arctic project turns five years old. We would like to screen the films found on the land for tidiness of which we care. We hope the screening will be a landmark event for Chukotka's residents and for our volunteers. This is a positive story showing we have a common goal with previous generations - to preserve values."
Volunteers found rare Soviet-era films inside the preserved Glubokaya weather station on the Palyavaam River. The weather station is located on the crossing of paths leading to Chukotka's different points. In the past, the station could accommodate up to 50 people at a time. There used to be a club with film equipment. The club staff also traveled the tundra to screen films.
"When the station was closed, the film reels ended up at a waste site. As for the find, we have found more than a dozen reels, on about 10% of them we have managed to read film titles, others are practically unreadable. However, the condition of the tape is good - it is possible to see what films there are. Our volunteers have taken the best preserved films to Pevek," the organization's leader said.
Plans to restore films
Specialists will have to manually clean the tapes from dust and dirt, to glue gaps, and replace bad glues. The digitization process is done at a low speed, which means work on one film will take many hours, but this work is anyway necessary and important.
"This discovery has become very significant. The volunteers who work in Chukotka understand the importance of connecting generations, especially in the year when Russia celebrates the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II). These rare films would be a bridge between those who watched them in the Soviet film club and the modern youth who are working for the Arctic," he said in conclusion.
About Clean Arctic
The Clean Arctic project is a big project to cleanup Arctic territories from waste accumulated there since Soviet times. Captain of the 50 Let Pobedy nuclear-powered Arctic-class icebreaker Dmitry Lobusov, and Gennady Antokhin, Captain on FESCO’s ships from 1982 to 2012, are the project’s authors. Clean Arctic has developed into a platform uniting public and volunteer organizations, scientists, governors and businesses. Over four years, 7,700 people have participated in expeditions. They have collected 19,800 tons of waste and cleaned 791 hectares of Arctic land. The project's partners are Nornickel, Rosatom, PhosAgro and RZD.
